Good SFX, questionable acting, howlingly bad plot

Rating: Null/10 (3 March 2003)

The whole world was raving about this in the summer of 1996. Terrific SFX, bad acting, awful plot. Even for a tongue-in-cheek movie, the plot's full of gaping holes: Steven Hiller would never have become a fighter pilot with that attitude. Military personnel would never have called it "Area 51". And how did David Levinson network his computer to the alien ship? They must use UNIX!
The characters are two-dimensional like you wouldn't believe. New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles etc. all get destroyed, and they simply acknowledge this and we move on to the next scene. You also have to sit through quite a lot of pro-American rubbish, and that scene portraying the British pilots in Saudi Arabia will haunt me for the rest of my days.
However, it's a pleasant distraction for a couple of hours, as long as you don't pay any attention to what you're watching...