Independence
Day
(1996)
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 2 Hours and 33 Minutes
Reviewer: Dale
Grade: COn a basic level, I suppose that this movie works. I mean, it exists to provide explosions and shiny things and make you feel a surge of adrenaline. And there are moments that provide that charge. Shiny things are made to move about the screen. Things do indeed explode.
But that doesn't mean I have to like it.
"Independence Day" is about the end of the world as we know it. It's about a bunch of aliens who come to Earth and proceed to blow the shit out of it. They don't come to enslave us. They don't come under the pretense of peace. They see the White House, they blow it up.
They see New York City and KA-BOOM! They see Los Angeles and...well, you get the idea. That is really all the more plot that there is. Which is to say, there is no plot. What little plotting there is shreds like tissue paper on even the slightest inspection.
SPOILER ALERT: At the end of the movie, for example, the alien ships are disabled by a computer virus. Okay, here's a problem: if the alien technology is so damn advanced, how come it is taken out by a computer virus created with Windows 95!
See what I mean?
Will Smith is pretty good in it. He has a great deal of charisma. Bill Pullman is pretty darn good in it, as in everything, as a take-charge president. And Jeff Goldblum is, well, Jeff Goldblum. There are moments of excitement here. I must admit that much. But they seem lifted complete from other, better movies. We have seen the battle with the aliens in "Star Wars", and the effects were even better. The alien mothership even gets destroyed the same way as The Death Star did. And the whole thing with the virus is just a technologically advanced variation of the end of "War of the Worlds".
But I wouldn't even mind that so much if the whole affair did not seem quite so hollow. The movie does not seem to have its heart in the actions it is putting onscreen. It is a step up from a Bruckheimer movie, but it still seems like a manufactured, paint-by-number film. It lacks the zest and zeal of movies like the Star Wars trilogy or even "The Fifth Element".
"Independence Day" is not necessarily a bad film. But isn't quite a good one either.
Reviewer: Erik
Grade: D
Even going into this movie expecting an action-packed-with-no-character-development style of movie, I was still disappointed. That's pretty bad.
You know the deal: Aliens invade, some people escape, they band together, they fight, other stuff happens. The special effects are cool, but they alone do not make a movie.
If there's one redeeming thing about this movie, it's Will Smith. He showed here he can carry a movie, and he's proved that numerous times since then. Otherwise, what the heck was this movie all about?
Will Smith sends an alien into unconsciousness with one punch. Yeah, okay. A computer virus destroys the entire alien network. Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith perform superb flying stunts in an alien spaceship they just hopped into minutes earlier.
And Randy Quaid...why? What a dumb character. He stumbles around, drunk, babbling about God knows what, then volunteers to fly a fighter at the end (who in their right mind would let him up there???). When he died (spitting out perfect little Rambo-esque quips along the way), I wanted to stand and applaud. Not for what he did, but because he was finally out of the movie.
The movie is mediocre at best. Someone said this was "Close Encounters of the Worst Kind." That reminded me....go rent something smart like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" Avoid this.