Alien Out to Lunch

Rating: 1/10 (2 April 2017)

'Life' has state-of-the-art production values, but its sophomoric science and scientists would be sneered at by kindergartners. The story begins as a robot probe carrying a cargo of soil samples from Mars arrives at the International Space Station in unnecessarily melodramatic fashion. The follies continue inside the station's 'fail-safe' isolation lab, after a biologist revives a Martian organism which has been in suspended animation for the last 3 billion years. The tiny creature seems cute at first and is named Calvin, but he soon escapes from his cell in the orbiting Supermax prison - and like all toddlers, he starts to misbehave.
What follows is an 'Alien' copycat plot, except with even more generic characters, duller dialog and a total absence of original ideas. In a matter of hours, Calvin bulks up into a starfish-squid hybrid with the strength of a gorilla, the intelligence of a chess grand-master and the empathetic capacity of a cobra. Calvin's cuteness wears off fast, and the crew decide to neutralize him, but he demonstrates some impressive natural defenses and the ability to scamper about the station's exterior in a vacuum. After that, the hapless astronauts know they need to think out of the box if they want to avoid becoming Calvin's luncheon buffet.