Disappointed without any expectations

Rating: 3/10 (8 September 2009)

They say that if you go to a movie not expecting anything, you cannot be disappointed. Well, they have just been proved wrong. I saw the film without knowing what to expect, only that it was about aliens and supposedly action packed. Oh, and that Peter Jackson had something to do with it.
We went there and after a couple of very interesting trailer a pseudo documentary started. Using stylistic devices such as "I can't believe he did that" without ever referring to what they meant they built up the tension to have you expect someone to do something really terrible. So after the utterly realistic "rescue" of countless aliens and their relocation to a township were unveiled dramatically, the main focus of the story changed to a new relocation project. Then to the protagonist, an MNU worker who just got promoted. He gets depicted as this really sweet, if not overly clever guy who got lucky a few times. Cut to the operation where he now is the reckless idiot who doesn't seem to care for the safety of his comrades. Then he's suddenly a guy showing empathy ("No shooting"). Then he's suddenly all into violence. - And that's just the first 10 or so minutes of the film and it goes on and on and on. None of the characters were believable and it was impossible to identify with any of them. At least one could FEEL with the alien characters Christopher Johnson and his son (who...which? was really cute). But even they ... what's their back story? And also, why did the huge mother ship come to earth, why was it hosting countless aliens, why were they starving, what was their aim? If the humans managed to cut their way into the damn thing to "rescue" the aliens, why not examine it closer? Clean it up, get some light in there etc. If it doesn't work due to the missing control unit (and some other missing element, apparently), how can it stay in the air then? Or are alien ships exempt from gravity? And if the control unit from the airship was missing, how come they could make it react and beam stuff up all of a sudden? Seriously, if there is a control unit ready to accept commands on there and act accordingly, surely they could have fixed it sooner than... after 20 years.
Anyway. The soundtrack was okay, the action itself was alright, too (some of the weapons were actually pretty cool albeit strongly reminding of 3PS and FPS games...), the plot was full of holes and forced content (like the way the so called "Nigerian Scam" clan was set up), the acting was often terrible - Johnson and his son were okay - and all in all it was really just not that good.