"There's a lot of secrets in District 9".

Rating: 8/10 (21 February 2010)

"They have landed,..., and now they are among us". That would have been a pretty catchy way to introduce the extra-terrestrial race in "District 9", but it was used way back in 1988 for "Alien Nation". I think the film's premise would have gotten a lot more mileage out of fashioning the aliens after something a little more human-like instead of the skeletal creatures reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen's creations in 1963's "Jason and the Argonauts". But that's just me.
What I did like about the film was some of the more original concepts in sci-fi since 1979's "Alien". Like the biologically designed weapons dependent on Prawn DNA, and van de Merwe's perfect transition between a human and alien species. Well maybe not totally original for the latter idea, there was Vincent Price's 1958 flick "The Fly" and 1959's "The Wasp Woman". But the idea still seemed fresh here, maybe I haven't seen enough present day movies to be more critical.
I know it probably wasn't intentional, but the film's comic moment for me was when the cat food of choice for the Prawns was revealed to be Puddi brand. Automatically I connected to those old Warner Brothers cartoons with Sylvester and Tweety when the canary protagonist 'taut he taw a puddi tat'. My mind works in strange ways sometimes.
There's certainly a political and racially motivated component to the story, but I won't get into that here. I would have preferred if the picture explored those elements more effectively than in pursuing a high tech action adventure format in the latter part of the picture. But since it wasn't my call, I can still offer a reasonable recommendation for the flick on it's own merits, with a look that manages to instill a naturalness along side the ubiquitous CGI.