Plot could have been so much better, if they had focused on cultural clash!

Rating: 3/10 (24 September 2009)

I admit it, I really fell for the marketing campaign! Those postcards saying "Toilet use only for humans", etc. were just hilarious and I instantly put one up on the toilet door in my flat. My flatmates all had a good laugh and so I decided to see the movie that gave us the funniest marketing stuff in years.
Actually, I didn't really look up the plot before going to see the film. I just had these "No aliens allowed" and "No humans allowed" signs in my mind and I concluded that the movie must be about alien discrimination. As I knew from the trailer it was an action-packed, I thought it would probably be about aliens striking back after years of oppression, defeating the humans and then putting them into a slum district - certainly mixed with a lot of action, fighting, shooting and probably blood and alien guts - but never losing the message of racial discrimination.
Well, that's what I expected, but not what I got! What I got was a rather lame story with non-credible characters. Not only was the alien race portrayed as the ones with superiour technology, but none the less stupid and just senselessly violent - the humans were also very weak flat characters, all of them. I never really sympathized with Wikus, I didn't really get an image of how he lived and what he believed in. His wife was little more than an extra. Also, more generally, you didn't get much insight into the two clashing cultures of the humans and the aliens. The only "cultural information" was that the aliens are addicted to cat food. Hmmmmm, very clever idea! When you choose to have dialogue with an alien speaking to another alien (which I found difficult to follow sometimes, as I didn't always get which alien was speaking now, because the voices all sounded pretty much the same and I can't read subtitles and at the same time look which alien is moving its mouth or rather those tentacles!), then why don't you at least let them talk about their culture, how they became oppressed, how terrible they feel under this discrimination, and how it is their dream to return home? The father-son pairing would be the ideal opportunity to do that. The father could tell his young son, who has never seen his home world, how it is at home and how he longs to be back there. This would give us so much more insight into the aliens' feelings and motivations. But none of that!
SPOILER Instead of working on the issue of a cultural clash and its consequences, we're just given this rather boring chase for an alien liquid! And why the hell isn't there more inner conflict in Wikus as to where he really belongs? I mean, when he's turning into an alien, obviously this isn't affecting his way of thinking, which would be far more interesting! He could begin to understand the way the aliens think and feel and regret what he did to them earlier, even try to mediate between aliens and humans against all obstacles.END SPOILER
You see, I've got a thousand ideas how to make the plot more interesting, but the producers opted for the most boring alternative and though everything would be fine, if they include a transformer-like robot-thing in the end and have a lot of action and shooting... For me, it was a huge disappointment. Not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's just that it could have been so much better. And I agree with other reviewers here: I definitely won't watch "District 10", if it is ever released.