We have only ourselves to blame

Rating: 6/10 (30 July 1999)

I paid to see this in a cinema, too. In my own small way I contributed to its financial success. Forgive me. Forgive all of us. This is the kind of movie we, the audience, have created. Certainly I can't detect any creativity on the part of the writers.
Parts are symptomatic of the whole: so I will practise restraint and mention just ONE glaring stupidity. Just one. Longer (but incomplete) lists of idiocies may be found elsewhere - the last time I looked there was a decent list on the IMDb itself. Okay, here it is:
The aliens take over our satellites and no-one knows why. With the same creative reasoning he displayed in "Jurassic Park" when he deduced a revolt of the dinosaurs from the movement of a water droplet, Jeff Goldblum works out that the aliens are using our satellites to communicate with each other so that they will be able to co-ordinate their attack. "That's IT!" everyone shouts. One wonders how the Allies managed in the Second World War. Did they use German satellites - or did they simply synchronise their watches? Here's a hot piece of technology we can sell to the aliens: the WATCH! It's a little device that enables one to TELL THE TIME! Everyone can have ONE EACH and then EVERYONE will know what time it is!
My point is not that this is a stupid weakness in the plot. I mean, it is, but that's not my point. My point is that we REALISE just how stupid this is, almost before the words have left Goldblum's lips. We aren't given a chance to be charitable about it. A hundred weaknesses will make themselves apparent while you watch, however low you set the relevant dials in your brain (some people can go as low as "dribbling moron", but most of us can't). The movie just stumbles from stupidity to stupidity via bridge passages of stupidity. There's a bit of purported excitement here and there to distract us from all the stupidity but it's so perfunctorily done that it just doesn't work. Aliens taking over the Earth: it's a grand theme, but there's little grandeur in the treatment. There is, however, an awful lot of stupidity.
To make matters worse there's some offensive nationalism. The aliens are threatening the ENTIRE EARTH - patriotism under the circumstances is a good thing, but it's the Earth (or humanity) as a whole that the tub-thumping ought to serve; not the USA in particular. I've heard a rumour - probably false - I don't want to alarm anyone - that there will be a sequel. What will they call it? Bastille Day?