good ol' American fun

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 1998)

I don't care what anybody says, this is the best, big-screen sci-fi epic to hit us since we saw the last of the Star Wars episodes. Yeah, it's schlock and predictable, but it's also unabashed fun and great eye candy. Subtextual lines can be set to the future in anticipation of the holocaust disaster films heralding in the new decade, and backwards to America's hypocritical prejudice towards its takeover by aliens of another breed (read illegal, here). Wrap it all up in the flag-waving mythos of "Mr Smith goes to Washington" and Hans Solo rebel forces of "Star Wars", and you've plucked about every heartstring out there. The cast of characters is equally diametric and dysfunctional, ranging from an alien-abducted drunk to a woody-making stripper, and passing through a scientist that's the incarnation of Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Leary. There's no love lost on the young here like "Titanic" or "Deep Impact", but the film has plenty of mature sap between its token black couple, its divorced-estranged, career-vs-heart pair, and even a tear-jerk cameo from the President and his dying wife, appropriately played out in the hugging encounters from their young daughter. Typical set pieces like the nagging, Jewish father, the steady, steel-jawed General, the endearing but doomed wingman, and the conniving, weasely ex-CIA director act as anchors for the other, more fleshed-out stereotypes to breathe. Admittedly, Goldblum resurrects is too-many-brain-cells-make-you-depressed doctor from "Jussasic Park", but he's soooo smoooooth at it. Pullman's dedicated-but-troubled President is steady if boring, but he's effectively played off Smith's vivacious, life-loving pilot who gets to split all the good lines with Quaid's more besotted flyboy interpretation. After all the pyrotechnics and special effects have fizzled down, the film's still standing from the weight of its characterizations. And that, as the President patriotizes in his Fourth of July speech, is all that ultimately matters.