Battlefield Earth
Stinkaroo! A long-anticipated film (due to the enormous popularity of the 1970′s novel by famed Thetan L. Ron Hubbard), Battlefield Earth is a disappointing mishmash of crap, silliness, unintentional hilarity, and – for goodness’ sake – embarrassing performances. Barry Pepper, a man genetically designed to play an urban cop kind of character, does the best he can with the material he’s given. John Travolta did not surprise me one whit. As a long-time Travolta detractor, even I had to admit that nothing Travolta could have done would have saved this movie – I mean, I could blame almost nothing on him. Except letting it happen! He’s down with Hubbard, he could have stopped it, somehow? Couldn’t he? It must be a testament to the spiritual bandaid of Scientology that the whole cast did not commit suicide after seeing this movie.
But wait! The actors get a script, they read it, they learn it, they perform it in front of a camera. Clearly, at no point did anyone say, “Man, this is a steaming pile of hangover dung – why don’t we fix it?” My fans know well how little I liked Phantom Menace; well, folks, this has just supplanted it as my mockery target of 2000. I struggled, looking for reasons to like the movie. The aliens were totally Klingon knockoffs, complete with butt-cheek print heads, glarf-krox-narf-blag language, and unending double dealing, hostility, and hubris, but without all the code-of-honor business that makes the Klingons more fully two dimensional. Oh did I mention they are called Psychlos? I mean, COME ON! If your 6 year old kid sister put on a play in the living room about evil aliens she would come up with a better name. This is Hubbard’s fault, of course, but couldn’t at least his errors have been glossed over? Heaven knows GOOD books are destroyed by Hollywood, why not BAD ones? I have been told the novel is quite good, actually, but I was also advised it should never be a movie. I could *not* agree more.
The execrable dialogue was pre-Planet of the Apes bad camp. The makeup was all Apes too, actually, not as good. Rubbery hands rest awkwardly on hips and table tops – gestures reduced to a minimum so the wobbling, claw-nailed hands won’t look as obviously fake. The man-animals with whom I saw the film cracked some seriously good jokes and I was in stitches the last half of the movie. If only I could have been in traction, elsewhere! The only real benefit to having seen this movie is to get to mock it, crucify it, murder it! Oh, to think what Charleton Heston could have done in that mountain gorilla suit instead of Forrest Whittaker! I noted that the production crew names flashing in the opening credits were largely unfamiliar to me (and I pay attention to that stuff). I don’t even want to generate a hit to the IMDB site to find out who they are, I am so offended by this movie. You should check out the alternate movie poster in Entertainment Weekly (May 26, 2000, page 9) – it quotes reviewers much in the same way the Saving Private Ryan poster did…oh, but without all those stars and raves. Very funny.
I will grant that the film had cool ships, decent sound design, and there was a nice glass-breaking sequence (FX-wise). Barry Pepper looks pretty good with long hair. I thought the set dressers did a nice job with Earth of the year 3000 (Futurama bubbling away in an alternate universe), but the people on it – oy vey! The simplest things are handled with idiocy – can the man-animals read, or not? If so, keep it that way and don’t let them selectively forget to read when confronted with important information later. If not, then for all that is holy don’t let them learn how in a week! Never mind all the other stuff they learned in a week. Never mind all the other stupid awful terrible things inflicted upon this unsuspecting reporter!
I have to feel sorry for the cast at the big red carpet premiere – of course everyone shows up with their friends and so on, proud and excited about all this work that they did – and then to have to sit there in the audience and pretend they wouldn’t rather be getting a high colonic from Dr. Kevorkian – I mean, poor Kelly Preston! “Oh honey I loved your movie!”
If you see this movie anyway, don’t blame me. I am encouraging you not only to skip this movie, but to knock over tie-in displays in stores. And as a reviewer I deeply admire said, don’t worry about the extended warranty plan on your Harrier jet.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 5/12/00
Time in minutes 130
Director Roger Christian
Studio Warner Brothers
