Over-rated!

Rating: 4/10 (28 January 2010)

There is a species known as "Prawns" originating from a planet with seven moons in the Andromeda Galaxy. Prawns are adept in developing biotechnology, such that they have made their spacecraft, their guns, their fuel, and practically the rest of their technology dependent upon their biology. If they are so adept at it, why didn't they develop the biotechnology to transform their species of drones into highly intelligent independent individuals?!?
Sparing that, they could have at least brought along some other individuals independent from the hive mind, that way they wouldn't have to be completely screwed when the hive mind dies or when someone launches a biochemical attack. In Star Trek they bring along Klingons, Vulcans, Betzaoids, Androids, etc, so if one of them falls to a virus that causes mental retardation, at least the rest can continue on. The Prawns could at least build a few robots like data and make their spaceship highly intelligent, again so that they wouldn't have to be screwed over when the hive mind dies.
Okay, so somehow it ends up that their hive mind dies and their crew is completely direction-less and screwed over. Their spacecraft should still communicate back its status to the other Prawns, or did they lack basic communication technology?!! Why would the prawns forget about one of their own spacecrafts? NASA keeps pretty good track of its spacecrafts, so why can't the Prawns with all their technology do just as good of a job??
Okay so their crew is screwed and the rest of their species forget about them. The last thing they should do is land on a foreign planet! They have no idea how advanced or hostile that planet is, or what sort of deadly viruses and toxins that planet might contain. In reality they would just sit around the sun and harvest its energy to power their spaceship. I am sure the comfort of their spacecraft and their alien technology would be far superior then the slum-like conditions they had on Earth.
Granted they do use biotechnology a lot, I simply do not see how biotechnology could be used as fuel. Besides that why on Earth did the fuel turn Wikus into an alien?? In addition, why do they have the technology to reverse the transforming effect this fuel has on humans?
Moving along to when the aliens are on Earth in the film, why didn't the aliens, with the exception of Christopher Johnson, use their guns to retaliate? Why do the Prawns like cat-food in the first place? Why would they trade their guns for cat-food, and why would Nigerians stockpile guns that they can't even use? Why does the government approach the situation so poorly and why does the government allow human beings to stay with aliens in district 9? What about inter-species prostitution?!?! What is that about and why isn't the U.N dealing with these things, to at least protect the welfare of the people on the human side?
Now lets consider the completely unlikeable protagonist: Wikus. There is little to no character development and his plot is just as ridiculous as the plot for the rest of this movie. He does an abortion on aliens like it is funny or something? It isn't, the audience doesn't laugh with him so that scene is just stupid. He finds some volatile black fuel and that one of the retarded aliens failed to hide, and he gets exposed to it, why doesn't he go seek medical help immediately? Then when he is transforming why does his very own wife believe that he had "sex with aliens"? Come on, sex with aliens, that is just ridiculous! Then he moves to District 9, because the idiotic government has completely failed to place any decent security in the region. He meets Christopher Johnson and they are somehow supposed to bond? Even though Wikus attacks Christopher Johnson, and even though he committed countless crimes against the Prawns, Christopher Johnson still bonds with him? Come on that is just ridiculous!
Finally, what is the take-home message of this film? Treat retarded aliens that land on Earth with respect? Perhaps it is that human beings are cruel because everyone in this film is cruel to an incredibly fictitious extent. Even if it is that human beings are cruel, that does not really teach anyone morals, people are not going to leave this movie with an increased understanding of ethical theory so this film does not really have much of a take home message.
In conclusion, this film is highly over-rated. Some people praise it for being "original." It is not, this sort of theme has been thoroughly explored in films such as {Alien Nation (1988)}. Besides that the visual effects and CGI are not that good, they were done on a poor budget and there are many flaws, just check the Goofs link under "Fun Stuff." It doesn't contain plot holes in that link though, because there is simply too many of them to possibly fit in a single page.