Good Movie But A Masterpiece Hell No

Rating: 6/10 (16 August 2009)

OK for the last 3 months we all have been curious as to what this movie would be like considering the teaser trailer that played in front of Wolverine was mysterious and didn't give much in the way of this film's plot. So finally after months of waiting i caught this film on opening night wanting to see what all the fuss was about. Everywhere i read people were claiming this was a masterpiece, the second coming of sci-fi, and a classic in the near future. Well everyone what i saw on Friday night was good and watchable but nothing like the praise this has received on the internet and your local paper. First let me get to the good points the CGI was amazing for the budget they had especially the aliens and spaceships that were presented in the film (My personal favorite was the ship rising from under the ground and heading toward the mother ship). Secondly it was nice to see aliens that were sympathetic and who you wanted to see make it to the end of the movie. Lastly the entire third act was action packed and made up for a very sluggish slow-moving first two acts that made you consider wanting your movie back. I'm glad I sticked around. Oh yeah the acting was good all around.
OK now for the bad points as i mentioned the first 50 minutes or so are very slow moving and is done in a documentary style as if your watching something off the history channel. For instance as the main plot is going on with the main characters the film suddenly switches to random interviews with scientists and government officials who explain in vivid detail everything that's going on within the scene you are watching. Other complaints i have is the sickening use of shaky cam during acion scenes which make it impossible to see what's going on. I am so sick of this this shaky cam nonsense it adds nothing to the movie it just simply irritates since you know action scenes can be handled properly like old school Schwarzenegger or Steven Seagal movies who used steady cam and where you could see what was going on. So simply stop using this crappy overrated technique. My last complaint has to do with the ending which felt really unsatisfactory and left wide open for a sequel. Spoiler alert: The end of the film consists of Wilkus the main character getting infected with an alien disease which over a 74 hour process will turn him into an alien. After being taken in by the government and temporarily used for weird experiments Wilkus escapes and goes to District 9 to find a cure. While there he meets Christopher the leader of the aliens and his son who tell Wilkus that they can cure him but only with the cannister that Wilkus accidentally sprayed himself with while trying to evict aliens from District 9. Wilkus tells Christopher the cannister is at his job's basement and they'll half to blow it up to get in to retrieve it. They do this successfully and after a huge big battle in District 9 with the corrupt military and evil Nigerian terrorists Christopher while reprogramming the mother ship to go back to his home planet informs Wilkus that the curing process will take 3 years to complete and the real cure is on his home planet. He tells Wilkus he'll come back in three years and cure him. Suddenly after Christopher leaves the planet with his son title credits come up informing the audience all the aliens on planet earth have been moved to District 10. The final two scenes of District 9 are of Wilkus' wife showing the audience a flower her husband gave her followed by Wilkus as an alien in District 9 showing the audience the flower he gave his wife. The End turn the lights up while people in the audience groan and shrug as they realize they have been ripped off thinking they were seeing a stand alone original movie but instead sat through a 105 minute set up for the sequel inevitably called District 10. So overall decent to watch worth seeing once at the theater or DVD but please please don't believe anything these nerdy bloggers have to say on the internet proclaiming this is a masterpiece because it isn't. It's a good movie overblown into something it is not aka The Dark Knight. So to all you nerds out there get a life your overuse of words like masterpiece and classic to describe every movie that comes out makes you seem like the nutcase you really are and makes your arguments seem not only childish but really irrelevant. Make your own mind up as to whether you liked a movie or not don't just listen to the podcasts on the internet and think they are the end all be all. When you do that then i will take your word on movies seriously and you can be a legitimate moviegoer again. Sorry bout the tirade i just had to let it out.