Very good but one nagging problem

Rating: 8/10 (16 August 2009)

I just got back from watching it (Was only $2.25 for matinée, cheapest that I know of. My drink cost me $1.50 more than the movie did.) I'll try to not write anything that is a spoiler but I have to mention some plot points in order to express my opinion of it.
The movie has two different feels, the first half has a lot of docudrama stuff and more comedy than I would have guessed. The second half is action packed and is a real nail biter. I didn't find it as depressing as some people have described to me. Because of what they'd said I was expecting it to be a real tear jerker. But really it wasn't. Sure, it does tug at your emotions and you find yourself rooting for the aliens (It's hard not to cheer for the guy getting kicked around.) but there are much, much more depressing movies out there.
There were some things about it that seemed a little odd. For one thing with the exception of one of the aliens and his son most of them behave as though they are barely intelligent. It kinda' left me wondering how in the heck this race was able to build a spaceship and travel to other star systems. Many of them parade around beating their chests and behaving like gullible children when presented with cat food, etc. The movie never really explained why the one alien seemed so much more intelligent than the majority of them so I found myself imagining my own reasons, like maybe most of the smarter, more scientific ones were killed off in the ship when they started starving to death. Perhaps it was mostly physically strong but not very well educated workers that survived. Or maybe the aliens have never been presented with deception before, perhaps don't even understand the concept of it, and that's why it is so easy to take advantage of them. Beats me, but I wish the movie would have given me something to explain their ignorance and naivety. It didn't even try to. Instead I'm left making guesses as to the cause of it. Basically it comes down to you look at them and you look at what they've built and it doesn't appear to add up. It seems like oil and water.
So my biggest problem with this film is that it seemed to me that the aliens presented in it didn't seem smart enough to be able to travel here in the first place. Humans have total control of the situation and bully around these space travelers as easily as they would a colony of monkeys. The aliens are armed to the teeth with sophisticated weaponry that blows ours away but instead of using or at least threatening to use it to demand better treatment of themselves they sell them...for cat food! I don't know, this part of the movie just really didn't wash with me. Seems to me that if aliens capable of space travel are no smarter than that then when mankind develops similar technology it would be able to take over the entire galaxy with ease.
What I did like about the film is the portrayal of humanity's reaction to the aliens. I think this is presented quite realistically. It is expected that the aliens' appearance would revolt them and the behavior of the visitors doesn't help their cause either. As mentioned before they spend most of their time carrying on like animals rather than sentient beings so people not wanting them around them makes perfect sense to me. In fact, the film actually depicts people as being quite patient with them. After all, it takes two decades before the humans in the area start demanding that they be moved. The military is shown to act in a comically evil way towards them but bare in mind that it took many years to escalate into that. At first people, even the government and military, embrace them with open arms. But because of the aliens' behavior I don't see how things could have ended up any other way. Over time I think people kept getting a lower and lower opinion of them, a feeling that they were dealing with something barely intelligent (Hey, that's the way I was feeling so it was pretty easy for me to identify with them thinking the same thing.). And this probably led them to start viewing them as animals and we know how we treat animals. Once a feeling of superiority was achieved it isn't hard to imagine that exploitation, hard treatment, experimentation, killing without feeling remorse, etc., would follow.
I suppose the aliens' apparent brainlessness was necessary for the director to tell the kind of story he wanted to. After all, if the aliens were carrying on in a brilliant manner how could he portray humanity abusing them with such relative ease? But I just can't see how a race like that could build such amazing technology. It just didn't seem to make sense. Yes, there is one alien and his son who appear appropriately intelligent but all the others act as though they've been lobotomized. They can speak, but that's about it.
I did like this movie despite the one major criticism I have of it. The second half is especially fun, like a roller coaster ride. I recommend it. I'll give it an 8 out of 10. Btw, I think a sequel is very likely. It had the type of ending that left a lot of questions unanswered and plot points unresolved. Hopefully a part 2 will explain why most of them were so freakin' stupid!