Almost as bad as reported

Rating: 5/10 (8 September 1999)

(Some spoilers).
INDEPENDENCE DAY is the story of an attack on the planet Earth by the dumbest aliens in the universe. In this movie, a heroic president (Bill Pullman), a crackerjack fighter pilot (Will Smith), and a computer programmer (Jeff Goldblum), with some help, manage to defeat the combined efforts of an entire species that has been scoping Earth out for decades in. . . two or three days.
Words cannot describe how stupid these aliens are. We'll leave aside the unlikelihood that a species thousands of years ahead of us technologically still hasn't advanced culturally beyond the rob-and-pillage society of the 13th-century Mongols. It seems unlikely, but you have to admit that we humans have kept on being pretty brutal to each other despite our advancing technology. But why would such aliens do something like blast Earth's cities, building by building, to get rid of us? That's something like trying to exterminate ants by stomping on them one by one. If the aliens wanted to get rid of us, they'd just bioengineer a microbe specifically bred to eliminate only humans, or whatever species they wanted to eliminate. Humans are only a hundred years at most away from being able to do this; to highly advanced aliens it would be routine, especially when they've putatively been spying on us and experimenting on us for decades. They expose their flying saucers to attack from Earth's combined air forces, for no visible reason. It's enough to make you wonder how these aliens ever lasted this long in the planet-conquering business.
Then, of course, there's Goldblum using a computer virus to defeat the aliens, which makes about as much sense as the idea of using ENIAC to sabotage a Cray. No, make that less sense. And there's an alien that keels over at one punch from Will Smith but then kills half a dozen scalpel-armed lab technicians a few scenes later. This goes beyond any reasonable suspension of disbelief; it's just plain lazy writing.
Jeff Goldblum's acting is wooden and unappealing, and the characters are extremely one-dimensional. I know some will say to forget about these matters and just be entertained, but that's not the point; I *need* to see some interesting people to be entertained, and the feeling of having my intelligence insulted makes for a less entertaining experience. By the same token, thoughtful scripts and fleshed out characters aren't just more prestigious and more "arty"; they're a lot more entertaining, too!
Anyway, there are some good points to INDEPENDENCE DAY. Aside from Goldblum, the acting is mostly pretty good. Will Smith is passably cocky and arrogant, and Bill Pullman has some charisma as the president. Judd Hirsch is so good that he manages to give some life to his cliche character. There are some humorous one-liners such as "Welcome to Earth!" and "Nobody's perfect."
The special effects truly are breathtaking at times, as when the shadow of the alien ship creeps over whole cities at a time. I truly did feel as the Carib Indians must have felt when Columbus landed on Hispaniola and confronted them with something totally outside the range of their experience. Off the big screen, this effect would be lost, so I don't recommend renting this movie on video tape.
A man like Whitmore could never be president of the United States, but I can see what Emmerich was trying for; this is the guy a lot of Americans wish they had as president, instead of the snake-oil salesmen we usually get. And while it's totally unrealistic, even given his pilot's experience, that Whitmore would fly in combat, it sure would be nice to have a president who knew that the country would survive just fine even if he died. (America has had five presidents die in office; the country survived each time none the worse for wear).
Oddly I feel compelled to defend this stupid movie from its detractors in at least one respect; its American patriotism. Patriotism, American or otherwise, is not in and of itself a bad thing to have in a movie. CASABLANCA is loaded with French patriotism (they play La Marseillaise at least twice); THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING is chock full of British patriotism; the Oscar-winning MRS. MINIVER is also full of British patriotism; EXODUS is to a great degree an exercise in Israeli patriotism; and the much-hailed ALEKSANDR NEVSKI is a celebration of Russian patriotism. Americans should be allowed their own patriotic movies (though preferably higher quality than this one). Pullman has repeatedly been excoriated for suggesting that July 4 would become an international holiday, completely missing the point that such a holiday would be celebrating not American independence, but rather the combined efforts of *all* the world's countries to fight off the alien scourge, an event that certainly would deserve international commemoration and which happened to occur on July 4.
Lazy, dumb, overblown and insulting, INDEPENDENCE DAY is not worth renting. But it is not as worthless as some would have you believe, and if by some chance it returns to the dollar theater, you could do worse than see a little humor and some good special effects on the wide screen, if you're in a tolerant mood.
Rating: ** out of ****.