5/10

Email to movie club friends

I sat for the first 10 minutes of the movie in a prized $19 seat in the middle centre of the VMax theatre, and then had to move to the back row because of the induced motion sickness. They say that Blair Witch Project started the hand-held camera craze on the big screen, then it was taken to the limit by Cloverfield. I’ve mercifully only seen parts of those movies, but if District 9 has used the same technique and toned it down a little, then I’m glad I didn’t pay to be nauseated by those other movies. When will this quivering, meandering camera technique be regarded as a short-lived fad and retired? It’s still popular on TV shows. Pardon me Donna if I’m giving away secrets here, but you looked rather pale when we came out of the movie. The milkshake in my tummy was wobbling like a spirit level and I kept covering my eyes and looking at the floor during the movie, but you looked like you just stepped off the boat in A Perfect Storm.

Anyway, Donna and John gave District 9 a rating of 4.0 and 3.5, but I only gave it 2.5. My mediocre rating is caused by a perceived lack of direction in the movie.

It’s a brave science fiction movie, done in a fresh way. But is it a science fiction movie? What genre is it? This is my main criticism of District 9. I don’t think the writers and producers had a clear picture of what genre this movie was supposed to be, or who it was supposed to appeal to. The apartheid like treatment of the aliens was such an obvious and laboured plot line that I eventually felt like I was being stabbed in the kidneys by it. The running gunfights (with gun-cam and chopper-cam) were exciting at first, but they went on and on and on and on and on... Towards the end of the movie I was almost praying that they’d stop the interminable fake-doco fire fights with nasty snarling flesh-exploding baddies and transformer-bots and just get back to the science fiction plot. So, between all of the in-your-face social commentary and gunfights I kept waiting for the SF element to evolve, but it barely did. As an SF genre fan, I wanted to know more about the aliens, their culture, their language and their gigantic ship (corny tribute to Independence Day, but it looked better).

Geek warning: When the alien is operating the control screens of the ship (like they do in CSI and NCIS) I saw some 3D rotating graphics of star systems and galaxies which seemed to be quite realistic (see Celestia software for example), and I thought we’d see some mind-boggling technology hurl the alien ship through space and time. But no, he fires up the gigantic boosters which look like they were copied from a contemporary space shuttle (maybe they were from a plastic kit model of a shuttle). I was wondering how this ship used jet rockets bolted to its side to flit between stars or galaxies. They do this in Star Wars of course, but surely not in a serious big-budget SF movie. I hate to be pedantic and nitpicking, but if you’re trying to put real science into an SF movie, either do it right, or absurdly overdo it and no one will care. It’s a delicate line between fantasy and stupidity.

In summary, this is a brave movie, cleverly done with the seed of many good ideas, but the hand-held camera effects are sickening and overdone, and the plot lacks focus.

After the movie I was telling the UUCMC about my “revisit moment” theory. Cult movies, movies with endless and lasting appeal have these mysterious “revisit moments”. Late at night, or when you’re bored by TV you’ll suddenly think of movie moments and scenes that intrigue you, scenes you want to see again and again, and you’ll reach for the DVD. I think of Alien, The Untouchables, Donnie Darko, Catch-22, Brazil, Citizen Kane, Terminator I, Gumball Rally, Wayne’s World, Lord of The Rings trilogy, The Castle, Blade Runner, etc. I can watch these movies over and over and always see something new. Sadly, I think that District 9 had none of these revisit moments; I will probably never watch any part of it again. So, like in my recent reviews of Star Trek XI and Terminator IV, I feel that so much cult potential was wasted, they couldn’t pick up the important and exciting threads of the plot and run with them and make a long overdue cult favourite.

Cheers,
Greg

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