Some great special effects but not much else

Rating: 2/10 (24 September 2003)

Readers of Arthur C. Clarke's classic "Childhood's End" will recognize the opening of this film, because that novel started in a similar way: Gigantic alien ships enter Earth's atmosphere and hover over our major cities. But oh, what a difference. Clarke's Overlords look like Satan but are a wise, kind and noble race. Under their stewardship, the human race enters a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, later to undergo a great cataclysmic transcendental transformation that foreshadows "2001." Too bad they couldn't be bothered to make that story but instead made this one: A lame, uninspired eco-fable with a few spectacular special effects and one or two good ideas, but basically a violent mess. (Possible spoilers) An alien race shows up in our skies. In the process, they use our communications satellites against us (apparently they can cross interstellar space but can't deploy their own satellites). Their great ships hover over our major cities (how do they know which ones are the most important? How do they know what the White House, etc., is?). After a day or two (why did they wait?), the ships activate beam weapons that destroy entire cities. In a ridiculously contrived scene, the aliens communicate telepathically with the U.S. president; this is so the audience can learn why they have come. They plan to occupy our planet, strip it of its resources (I guess we humans aren't raping our natural world aggressively enough), and then pick up and move on to the next planet of lamebrained autochthons. But a few American fighter pilots and a computer whiz team up to OUTWIT AND DEFEAT AN ENTIRE ADVANCED ALIEN RACE THAT HAS THE TECHNOLOGY TO CROSS INTERSTELLAR SPACE. Go figure.
Not only the basic plot is laughable; the film is also blighted by the totally illogical behavior of most of the human characters, not one of whom manages to rise above caricature. Bill Pullman plays a totally underwhelming U.S. president and the wonderful Mary McDonnell has very little to do as the First Lady except die. Judd Hirsch tries to be funny but is actually rather offensive as a Jewish alte kakker. Jeff Goldblum plays his nice Jewish son, who was once married to the ultimate Catholic shiksa (Margaret Colin) and still pines for her; she is now a presidential adviser. Will Smith's role comes closest to that of a real person; he is a fighter pilot. Viveca A. Fox is his luscious girlfriend, but you have to figure she has more mammaries than brains when she goes to her regular job as an exotic dancer with a monstrous spaceship hovering over L.A. Later on, they get married; I guess this is meant to reflect the fact that people actually have done impulsive things like get married in the middle of a war to try to prove that life goes on, or to declare their love when the husband is a soldier and is going off into mortal danger; but here it does nothing but interrupt the flow of the film. Harry Connick plays the U.S. Air Force's stupidest fighter pilot. He makes me wonder how we prevailed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Brent Spiner plays a caricature of a mad scientist who is the project leader investigating one of the aliens' fighter craft, which was THE alien spaceship that crashed in Roswell in the 1940s. Robert Loggia plays a caricature of an Air Force general. Randy Quaid plays a caricature of a burned-out alcoholic pilot who was actually abducted by the aliens during one of their scouting visits to Earth years before. He gives his life to destroy an alien spaceship in one of the film's most ludicrous scenes. And so it goes.
It is true that any computer can emulate any other computer, but in these days of computer literacy, most viewers of ID4 will have personally experienced compatibility problems with their PCs: Programs that won't run correctly, or at all, under their particular version of Windows, etc. Modern corporations have platoons of engineers who do nothing all day but struggle to keep their networks on line. So it stretches credibility way past the breaking point when Jeff Goldblum's character USES AN ORDINARY LAPTOP TO INFECT THE ENTIRE ALIEN COMPUTER NETWORK WITH A VIRUS THAT DEACTIVATES THEIR ENTIRE DEFENSIVE APPARATUS. I would love to have been at the story conference where they came up with that gobbler. It must have been real desperation time. Either that, or the writers have nothing but contempt for the viewers. And they must have run out of money on the pyrotechnics and had nothing left over for the alien special effects, because the aliens are astonishingly lame and unconvincing.
Modern CGI technology is now advanced enough that 'Childhood's End' could be successfully put on the screen. I hope that someone does so; unlike this turkey, it may actually be worth watching.