Most overrated film of 2009.

Rating: 6/10 (17 August 2009)

After hitting 9.0 for the weekend, I broke down and saw it. There are certainly some things to recommend it - excellent CGI, and some fantastic acting by Sharlto Copley in the lead role. It's possible worth seeing if you don't mind watching some splatter-happy violence.
That being said - the story is a complete and utter mess. If you've seen the trailers or viral marketing pieces you know that it's about a bunch of aliens "refugees" stuck in a ghetto called District 9. Basically, it's a thinly-veiled apartheid movie with aliens. Expect to be beaten over the head by this through the entire length of the film. You see, it's about how evil people are and how much they hate people errr... things (remember... thinly veiled) that are different from them. People are especially evil if the get together and form large paramilitary corporations that are inexplicably allowed to flaunt every known or imagined law, ethic, and moral code with complete impunity. People are so evil and stupid that they'll concentrate all of their efforts into beating down "the others" and completely give up on deciphering the massive amounts of technology the others happen to have. There's no point in trying to integrate them into society, no National Geographic teams in there studying them. Nope, nope, nope, we're just too busy, as a species, being evil. Even though the aliens are very easily bribed into doing whatever, we don't even try to persuade them to use their technology for us. We don't even want to use them as slaves. Target practice, maybe. We're just too darned committed to being evil. The politicians are in on it. The media's in on it. The father-in-law's in on it. It's serious work being this evil.
Does this sound like a ridiculous and over-the-top description? It's not. There's no human in this movie who's not a complete jerk. The hero? He's really a jerk. Everyone around him is an even bigger jerk. There's no human character in this movie that doesn't deserve to be fed through a wood chipper (the alien characters that get any development are, of course, noble, peaceful, and loving). Let's just be honest. There's a certain mindset that just gets off on this mentality - these people will see this movie and say "Oh yes! yes! yes! We're all jerks! Show us how bad we are!" It's species-level self-flagellation at its finest if you're into that sort of thing. Otherwise you'll spend quite a bit of time rolling your eyes.
One final word - shakeycam. Yes, it's supposed to be "documentary-style," but this is was just overboard. Think "camera being held by a person with an inner ear infection having a seizure." 6 / 10 stars