director
Roland Emmerich
screenwriters
Dean Devlin
Roland Emmerich
producer
Dean Devlin
cinematographer
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
music
David Arnold
editor
David Brenner
cast
Will Smith (Steven Hiller)
Bill Pullman (President Whitmore)
Jeff Goldblum (David Levinson)
Mary McDonnell (Marilyn Whitmore)
Judd Hirsch (Julius Levinson)
Robert Loggia (General Grey)
Randy Quaid (Russell Casse)
Margaret Colin (Constance Spano)
James Rebhorn (Nimzicki)
Harvey Fierstein (Gilbert)
Adam Baldwin (Mitchell)
Brent Spiner (Dr. Okun)
James Duval (Miguel Casse)
Vivica A. Fox (Jasmine Hiller)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 145m
u.s.
release: July 3, 1996
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other roland
emmerich films
reviewed on this website:
- the
day after tomorrow
- godzilla
- the
patriot
- stargate
|
If
you've heard Orson Welles' brilliant radio hoax The War of
the Worlds -- which sparked a national panic -- you know
it's scarier and more exciting (even in a visual sense)
than the boring, demoralizing Independence Day. The movie
arrives wrapped in the biggest "event" hype yet. Forget
government conspiracies about aliens -- what about the entertainment
media's conspiracy to persuade America that this movie doesn't
suck?
Independence Day is another retro hunk of cheese from
director Roland Emmerich, who co-wrote it with producer Dean
Devlin. These men, who also made the hit StarGate,
have been credited with resuscitating the sci-fi genre. If empty
movies like these are what sci-fi needs, it deserves to die.
ID4 (as the ads call it) is abysmally written and indifferently
directed, with long stretches of tedium. On opening night, I
felt the anticipation of the audience rapidly turning to disappointment.
Like StarGate, ID4 swipes from blockbusters of
recent decades. Despite the ostentatious three-chapter structure,
there are really only two acts: (1) Aliens strike; (2) We strike
back. Kaboom! Take that! The aliens, whose goal is simply to
kill us, so closely resemble the critters in the Alien
trilogy that H.R. Giger may have grounds for a lawsuit. Giger
will have to stand in line behind Steven Spielberg and George
Lucas, from whom Emmerich steals without shame. Suffice it to
say that the big alien craft is a Mother Ship Death Star.
ID4 is never more pathetic than when it pretends there
are human beings on the screen. Capable actors like Bill Pullman
(as the can-do President), Jeff Goldblum (as a computer wonk),
and Will Smith (as a gung-ho pilot) seem to be playing action-figure
versions of themselves. Goldblum and Smith make an engaging team,
but Goldblum recycles his dry inflections from Jurassic
Park (he even reprises his line "Must go faster"),
and Smith's rowdiness is marred by sentiment. Decent female roles?
Not in this boys' club. Sigourney Weaver, where are you when
we need you?
Does the movie deliver? There are perhaps ten minutes of slam-bang
annihilation, spread out over a yawning two and a half hours.
(Most of the movie is guys pacing and worrying.) Independence
Day may own the holiday weekend, but I can't see it doing
much repeat business. There's no magic in this kind of shallow,
adrenalized commerce. Once you've seen the heat-death of an entire
city, a jaded numbness sets in. ID4 goes all the way into
video-game nihilism. There goes New York! There goes L.A.! Bang,
bang, we're all dead! Isn't this fun?
Well, no. Even allowing for my usual crankiness towards these
thunderdome movies, Independence Day made me angry. Partly
it's because it made the covers of Newsweek and Time
last week, as if it were some zeitgeist spectacle ("America
Is Hooked on the Paranormal") instead of The Day the
Earth Stood Still on steroids. Mostly it's because its purpose
is to deliver a loud, crappy good time, and it fails -- it aims
low and misses. A movie can commit no greater sin. In a perverse
way, Independence Day is encouraging news. The summer's
worst movie has arrived; they can only get better from here. |