monkeys typing Hamlet

Rating: 3/10 (11 July 2012)

Like any space mission sponsored by a human corporation, this one has four leaders with no established boundaries between them: the corporate castrator representing the company financing the mission (who uses her personality for birth control); the two archaeologists who discover the message from an ancient alien civilization on earth (and thus instantly become fully qualified to lead an interstellar science mission to the sender of the message); and, oh yeah, the ship's captain (recently promoted from night-club musician).
Minor characters are too numerous and too stereotyped. When they wake up from hibernation, the different departments have not met each other, and immediately start telling each other to toss off. One scientist flies off the handle at another as if he has just discovered that his cracker jack box has no toy. There is even the expendable unattractive woman, who has no lines I can recall (make note, little girls in the audience: attractive women are worth saving; unattractive ones are expendable). One, two, and five at a time, these cardboard cutouts fall like plinking targets, until only the people whose lives are meant to matter are left.
Even the cameo appearance by Dave Bowman - an ironic homage to a far- better film in which hapless scientists and their AI projects go on a star-crossed deep-space mission to find humanity's progenitor - cannot save this film.
With the exception of some very good CGI, and Noomi Rapace's earthy effability (what this film is apparently about - since it has no other discernible purpose), this film is a small-wad masturbatory ejaculation.
Directing: criminal negligence; Dialogue: monkeys typing Hamlet; Plot: accidentally left behind on earth; Noomi Rapace's earthy effability: priceless