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Movie review: 'District 9' (avoid this movie)
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District 9/2009 - Directed by: Neil Blomkamp
Starring: Sharlto Copely and a bunch of people we'll never see again
The Plot: A group of aliens have some major engine trouble on a journey through our solar system. They make a quick pit-stop on Earth where they are greeted and treated to 20 years in a Johannesburg internment camp called District 9. When the people of that fair city want these alien nuisances off of their streets and out of their lives a team of "peace-keepers" is called in to move them to a new location. What do they find in the tenements and shanties of the alien compound? What dark, xenomorphial secrets will be revealed in District 9?
The Good: So Neil Blomkamp's an effects man eh? Good for him. For a film that costs a paltry 30 million dollars (and I say "paltry" knowing full well I will never see a pile of cash that steep in this lifetime...)District 9 could hold its own with the 200+ million crowd as far as visual effects are concerned. The alien "Prawns" look great. The newsreel footage in most of the documentary shots blending the colossal alien ship with the skyline of Johannesburg looked terrific. Plus District 9 closes with a mech-battle scene that would make any anime fan melt in his Jockey shorts. And don't even get me started on the gore effects in this "sci-fi" film. Things die ugly in this feature. Real ugly.
The Bad: I swore to myself that I wouldn't use the word "shit" or any variation of the term in this movie review. So now that I've tied both hands painfully behind my back review-wise let the verbal beating begin...
For the first ten minutes of District 9 we're treated to a sci-fi film opening with so much promise, so much outstanding potential - I could understand why folks were going ga-ga over this flick. The aliens have arrived. They're in bad shape. We've put them in camps. Everything looks documented and real. Whatever bad things I have to say concerning District 9, panning the film's opening wont' be one of them.
But as the movie rolled forward I started noticing that the acting seemed a bit off. Not totally rotten just yet, but definitely strolling in that direction. Which didn't seem to compute. This is a serious sci-fi flick right? It's got Peter Jackson's name on the poster right? The opening ten minutes of mockumentary footage were so convincing, so absolutely impressive in scale and dramatic value that the movie following them must be a movie of singular quality right? So why's everybody acting like we're in a low-grade zombie picture? How did this major sci-fi event film, (as it was advertised) suddenly become a cheese-grade splatter movie? And why weren't any of us warned about this?
District 9 is a bad movie. I'd say it's a bad B-movie but that's not totally correct either. It's a bad B-video-game-movie. If you've played any video games you're already aware that it doesn't take much to craft a convincing plot for a medium based solely on zoning out and killing stuff. You might need a dude who can shoot fire out of his eyes, or can meld weapons to his flesh, or has a retractable claw for an arm, and that's pretty much all it will take to get your common video-gamer on the couch and crushing buttons. But I doubt any sane filmmaker would ever base an entire film on a flimsy device like that. Or better stated, I "used" to doubt that. With District 9 I'm not so sure any more.
Aliens, guns that make people explode, evil corporate bastards who want to exploit said guns, and yes, even a wicked African witchdoctor - that's the scenery in District 9. The movie's actually about a guy with an alien arm who can fire alien weaponry. People want to use him. People want to kill him. People even want to eat his alien arm because their witchdoctor prescribed this treatment. And that's our story today folks. Obvious. Confusing. Stupid. Now could someone please hand me a Duelshock 3 controller...
There are no "dark secrets" hidden in District 9. There's no major reveal waiting in Act III. Our hero, (played by Sharlto Copely - hello new Jeffery Combs) is accidentally sprayed with alien "fluid" (this fluid is the centerpiece of this story - it requires 20 years to make, it can fuel a starship, it can also genetically change one life-form into another life form - it fits in an Aquanet can) and his body begins the transformation into an alien "Prawn". It's silly. It's appropriately gross. And whatever thoughts, feelings, hopes you may have had that you were watching a landmark sci-fi film get flushed down the loo gurgling in their own sloppy intestinal sludge. Oops I guess I really can't stay away from the potty talk on this occasion...
What downgrades District 9 from first class splatter movie to coach-seating total-pain-in-the-ass movie is the endless parade of dramatic moments the flick attempts to deploy on us. You know that worn-out film convention where the villain has a gun to the head of the protagonist and we're supposed to hope and pray that somewhere off camera someone dauntless will emerge and save our man - and he does! And relief washes over us in a warm wave of peace, hope, and inner joy. You know that scene? Yeah, that happens fifty different times in this movie. That there's always someone there to save the day makes District 9 a cinematic revelation...
The Ugly - And everybody's loving this movie. So either I'm crazy or the whole world is. Those aren't very good odds on my end. The conspiracist buried inside my brain believes that this has everything to do with the "poor (illegal) aliens getting picked-on by the xenophobic, corporate (white) men" theme that this film hashes out. A theme which I feel the desperate need to point out has been in 99% of our sci-fi movies since the dawn of the genre. I guess that there is some reconciliation that the filmmaker dumps the apartheid early for more budget aspirations like guns, gags and gore, but oh how I long for films of days past when our evil alien overlords used us as fertalizer, food sources, or as genetic guinea pigs - not as a classroom for the ethical treatment of interlopers...
The Verdict - Disrict 9 is nothing new. It's gross. The effects look pretty good. It occasionally goes on small-scale rampages of fun and adventure. But at its heart it's a video game movie. It's straight-to-DVD material at best. The acting is terrible. The drama is anemic. The message is pedestrian. There are no surprises here even though it would love for us to believe that there are. Put simply - District 9 is a bad movie. Anyone who tells you any different isn't human - do not trust them.
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