This is one of those odd movies for me to review, in that I feel like I really should have a review of it here after all this time, and yet I also feel like I’m kind of spent in my enthusiasm for it with the distance. I hated it when I first saw it on the big screen in 1997; but then, I hated a lot of things that year. I do know that every viewing since that, at least until this one, it got better everytime. This time I really started to wonder if it was really all about the beautiful orange-haired Milla Jovovich.

Every time I watch my favourite Luc Besson movie, Leon, I cringe even more at the boyish nature of the violence especially at the opening – like it really might as well be a bunch of 10 year olds running around going, “pitchoo!” at each other – and that stuff’s even more abundant in this movie. At the same time, however, it’s a lot more palatable due to the genre, especially once you start taking it as tongue-in-cheek comic-bookery. Oddly, the things that I despised most walking out of the multiplex in 1997 – Chris Tucker, Lee Evans etc – are the things I got the biggest kick out of (second of course to Milla) this less-than-ecstatic viewing. I’d forgotten about the Lee Evans appearance entirely, in fact.

So, is it really anything more than the half-naked orange-haired beauty of Milla? I guess first I want to say, even just considering Milla: she’s a lot more than that in this movie. I find her performance even more marvelous each time I see it and it’s a reason in itself to watch the movie even over the brief nudity and general heartstopping beauty of the girl. It nearly bears comparison to Jodie Foster’s Nell for me. The scene where she learns about war makes the movie for me, combining the best of her performance with just exactly the thing about the movie that does raise it above mere eye-candy. What it comes down to in the end, that conflict in Leeloo, “What’s the use of saving lives … when you see what you do with them?” – it’s simple but beautiful and it gets me everytime, even if it’s a long and clunky time coming. At least there’s Milla to get you through the dodgy parts.

I have some catching up to do so the next reviews might seem rushed, sorry bout that … I’m just gonna tidy up what I’ve already written and post.

Score 3 for the “movies I almost saw on my birthday this year but didn’t, thank god!” field lol. And this is the one that I really thought couldn’t fail for me. A movie like this should have my eyes unable to look away at all times, and frankly, this one didn’t achieve that at all. It rarely rises above its basic concept – War of the Worlds meets Blair Witch (or “there’s a visual effect loose in Manhattan and all I have is this lousy handycam!”). The only moderate surprise was Lizzy Caplan (Janis Ian from Mean Girls), who at first I thought was Zooey Deschanel’s sister. I was expecting a movie where if we saw the monster at all it would only be at the end; I think (ed.: hmm, I don’t know what I think, I left that sentence unfinished when I left off writing a week ago and I don’t know how it was gonna end LOL).

Its technical qualities lift it above most of what’s been released so far this year, though of course that isn’t saying much. The “wiping the tape” subplot is kind of as cute as it is hokey and leads to an ending that can’t fail to tug at the heartstrings. The whole message of the movie is clearly appreciate what you’ve got because it could all be gone tomorrow but I can’t help but think it could’ve been delivered better – dare I say it even, without the whole video gimmick that makes it remotely unique. I’d be amazed and depressed by the audience member who relates or so much as gives a damn about the characters here; and even if you were to start out with the blindest faith in them, the writer breaks the fourth wall horribly with misplaced humour like the Superman/Garfield dialogue, it’s just beyond hideously done. Even the second port of call, the visuals, isn’t really a department you can get too excited in – the monster itself is quite embarassingly reminiscent of the devil thing that appeared in the Season One finale of Torchwood. It’s probably cool to watch with a frenzied audience … but you know my feelings on that way of judging a movie’s true quality.

I honestly wanted to start this review by basically saying, WTF did you expect? I kinda-sorta-liked the first AVP movie. And this one begins, if anything, better than that one did; throughout, it’s certainly slicker and better in the visual effects department. But between the earth teens storyline and the, “See? No Monster!” scene, just … oh my God. I appreciate that this movie is aimed solely at fanboys but come on, cinema is a broad enough medium that you can be so superficial and at least partially fulfilling in other ways; the first movie showed that in its ending. It’s been a long time since I saw it, but I swear, even Predator 2 was better than this under the gore and visuals.

Yes, still, if you’re complaining – and I am – “what did you expect?” is certainly a valid response … but jeez, it scares me to think anyone over the age of 13 is paying for this crap.

“For better or worse … we’re human again …”

What’s everyone’s beef with this? Invasion of the Body Snatchers is just one of those stories that always works, and this new version, despite all the problems in its making (and yes, they do show – but I do wonder if we’d notice or care so much if certain people didn’t spend as much, if not more, time dwelling on what’s behind-the-scenes as they do on what ends up on the screen), is no exception.

Basically, it had me at “another Body Snatchers remake”, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Oliver Hirschbiegel, a really nice John Ottman score and all manner of supporting cast members. I wanted to see this movie. If you think there’s nothing here to love, then you know enough already about your own tastes to not bother watching. But if you think you might quite like it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in the slightest.

I think the highest praise I can give it is that I almost accidentally gave it the acid test by watching it today, having only slept a couple of hours this morning … my head was practically dropping off my shoulders during the Olsen twins movies, but by the end of this? I was bolt upright.

The only thing I’d personally complain about is the quite astonishingly conventional car chase and cure-all ending. I’m pretty sure they must’ve shot some kind of ending with a twist (first thing that came to mind for me was the rather obvious thing of the people on the helicopter having fooled her or something) – literally any kind of twist, no matter how corny, would’ve been more satisfying than that simple line I began the review with (don’t get me wrong, it’s a great line, I love it – but like that’s literally the ending of the movie and it’s not enough).

In the end, like all the other versions of the story, it leaves you thinking. It’s one of those movies that makes a frighteningly convincing case about something that we’re meant as “humans” to turn our noses up at. It actually makes you pause and go, “hang on … why not just let them take us?” Well, it did me at least. Perhaps I’ve said too much, lol. I know I wasn’t alone on the whole “wait a sec, Vader is talking perfect sense!” thing in Revenge of the Sith lol … Anyway … Equilibrium kinda did all the emotional deprivation thing a little better, but sometimes there’s room for many deliveries of a similar message and this is one such instance. For me it all comes together in the scene between Kidman and her son, a scene I was really longing to see, when they are both feigning a lack of emotion for fear that the other is “one of them”. Which I’ve found is exactly what far too many of us do for way too much of our time here recently.