Point by point ripoff of Alien Nation and the Fly

Rating: 4/10 (16 August 2009)

District 9 is highly derivative - I can't help but think that the flood of 10s awarded to this movie must have been given by younger people who haven't seen a lot of movies. Basically, this is Alien Nation meets The Fly, combined with a half-baked, out of date political allegory.
Worker bee aliens arrive over a major city and take up residence in a local slum after a period of years. This is of course the exact setup of Alien Nation. Our hero, initially broadly played as a geek, and later fluctuating between geek and self-interested hero, is sent to move the aliens further outside Joberg. He is infected and begins to become an alien, which his fingernails peeling off and his teeth falling out. These portions, which went on WAY too long, were identical to the transformation in The Fly. I mean exactly the same - fingernails and teeth. The portion of the film devoted to our hero's transformation consists of him vomiting and tearing off new pieces of his body for 45 straight minutes. Um, we get it. The director is clearly a master of restraint.
Aside from ripping off other movies (in the case of the Fly, much better movies), the style of the film is reflective of some bad cinematic trends of the past few years. A documentary style (which disappears for the middle hour of the film, only to reappear in the last five minutes) adds something for a little but eventually provides an unfortunate excuse for a lot shaky-cam. At least a dozen people walked out of my small theater, including my wife, because they thought they were going to throw up. Also, the main villains of the piece (the standard evil corporation seeking weapons technology from the Alien movies and some heartless mercenary types) are incredibly one dimensional.
The political allegory doesn't make a lot of sense, considering that the aliens are meant to represent native Africans suffering under apartheid. The aliens are not native, and were rescued from their ship and given a place to live, which they proceed to tear apart. I found myself wondering what was owed to these creatures - but every human is so despicable you are given no choice with respect to a rooting interest.
Basically, I didn't like much about the film until the last 30 minutes, when the action kicked in. Alien weapons are employed and cause considerable havoc. And you are meant to enjoy the site of humans being slaughtered by this technology. My enlightened San Francisco audience loved seeing people burst apart when hit by laser beams. The effects are good, and you feel for the hero's plight, if not the aliens.
By the way, nothing about the aliens is ever explained. I don't need every last bit spelled out for me, but the film proceeds as if the aliens and humans have never communicated in 27 years. Yet they can understand each other's language. No one knows why the aliens are here, if we could help them leave or prosper, who had enslaved them, anything about other aliens, etc. It just makes no sense, and its lazy.
Anyway, if you want to see a confused gross-out ripoff of a few other sci-fi movies with a couple of good action scenes at the end, this is your flick.Watch for the score on this one to drop quickly once people older than 20 start to report in.