Excellent!

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2005)

I've just seen Independence Day for the first time. We found the video at the thrift shop yesterday and brought it home, because I'd always wanted to see it, in a tepid sort of way. It's very, very good, despite being just a touch too heavy on Star Wars references. It's about as funny as a movie can be that's about big ugly vicious things trying to kill us all. I like it because Will Smith got turned down by NASA but ended up flying a spacecraft after all, and married the girl, and gave the poor little boy a father. I like it because the crazy drunk whom everybody laughed at recovered his self-respect, and his loving but exasperated son got his father back even as he lost him. I like that Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch played the parts of my husband and his dad. I like that the president, a former fighter pilot evidently uneasy with the dirty compromises of politics, gets one more chance to fly away from earthbound ambiguities into a clear sky and a straightforward mission. I like that Jeff Goldblum's ex-wife starts to wonder if ambition has perhaps led her away from something really worth doing, into something that only looked worthwhile. I like the silly moment when Harry Connick, Jr. appears to be proposing to Will Smith, and the thought plainly crosses his mind that if these aliens really do manage to take over the earth and kill everybody, at least he'll be spared having to talk his way out of that one. I like that the First Lady is assisted by an exotic dancer who admits that she "voted for the other one." I like the old Marine general, who never looked really at ease in that tie, back in fatigues and looking twenty years younger. Altogether, I really liked Independence Day.