By Geno McGahee
What an amazing amount of money this film made. On a 75 million dollar budget, this film brought home about 820 million. Timing was everything and disaster movies began to trend and aliens destroying the world is about as disastrous as it gets. It made big money and helped launch Will Smith as a serious force in film.
David (Jeff Goldblum) is a preachy asshole that plays chess with his dad, Julius (Judd Hirsch), in the park and can’t help but to mention the Styrofoam cup that he’s drinking from and how bad it is for the environment. David then gets to work and rides his bike through the office and NOBODY calls him on it because they know he’s just the sort of prick to go to HR and report. Because he won’t shut the fuck up, he starts bitching about recycling to the brother of Mrs. Doubtfire.
We are introduced to Russell (Randy Quaid), the crazy guy that believes in aliens and believes that he was abducted by them. We all know a guy like that. This movie asks the question: What if they were right? It’s just a movie. The guy at work that says he was abducted is lying. Why would aliens abduct complete idiots?
So, aliens are coming as expected with the poster of INDEPENDENCE DAY. It’d be a fucked up movie with no aliens and these aliens aren’t killed by water like they were in SIGNS and they mean fucking business. I was happy to see Robert Loggia as General Grey, the right hand man to President Whitmore (Bill Pullman). I always had concern for Loggia. When he did that chopsticks shit in BIG, I have to imagine that shit hurt his balls something fierce.
I like Whitmore. He gives a shit. If Pullman decides to role-play as Whitmore and sticks with it, I’m voting for him in the next election. Holy shit, I just realized that the daughter from MRS. DOUBTFIRE is in this too. She plays Alicia (Lisa Jakub), the daughter of crazy Russell. If you’re a MRS. DOUBTFIRE fan, and you want to see the characters deal with aliens, this movie is for you. I wonder what happened to Jakub. She was in some big movies and then disappeared. I hope she didn’t encounter any harassment bullshit from those Hollywood perverts.
Seeing the spaceships flying into the New York City is an epic visual. Goldblum did a good job with his reaction. It was more serious than when he saw those dinosaurs a few years earlier. This is “shit your pants” serious expression where the JURASSIC PARK was a “I may shit my pants” expression. That’s why Goldblum gets the big bucks.
David detects a countdown code and just happens to be the ex of the President’s assistant, Margaret (Constance Spano), and can get access to the President. David teams up with his dad and head over to Washington to save the day.
Captain Hiller (Will Smith) is called to action but must deal with his girlfriend, Jasmine (Vivica A. Fox), bitching at him endlessly and his acting here was superb. It was almost like he’s dealt with this before. At least Vivica didn’t demand Hiller to track down Chris Rock and slap the shit out of him.
What the hell is with Quaid’s performance? He is so over the top in this and it’s unbelievable. Had he toned it down a bit, he’d be much better but his performance in this really takes away from the film. Quaid is awesome too, but he’s shit here. He makes those that get probed by horny aliens look bad.
Another character I could have done without is Julius. It’s another terrible overacting job by Hirsch. This film would have benefitted had they had the aliens come down and probe Julius to death in the first two minutes of the film. Sometimes they make up for character development with accents or screaming. The aliens keep being cool though. So, I guess I can forgive the shitty characters.
This film does a great job at showing how stupid people are. A group of people gather on top of rooftops welcoming the aliens while others loot businesses. This shit would happen and if aliens wanted to take over, most of society would be easy prey. The aliens should be ashamed though. An advanced intelligence attacking a bunch of idiots seems beneath them, but it’s encouraged.
The visuals in this are awesome with the Empire State Building being blown up along with the White House. The aliens send walls of fire into all the big cities and destroy everything, including (spoiler) killing the brother in MRS. DOUBTFIRE. I wasn’t surprised. He was one of those characters that you just know is going to get the wrong end of the alien dick or whatever the saying is. There probably isn’t a saying. I just created one. Feel free to use it, but credit me or I’ll sue.
The aliens are far too dominant and our military can’t do shit to them. You’d think that the next step would be “I’ll suck your dick if you let us live” which usually happens. It’s one of those universal currencies that an alien would understand and I don’t believe aliens are dickless. It makes ZERO sense.
The President and a few others are brought to Area 51 and it’s admitted that there were bodies recovered at Roswell during the alien crash. Eat that Bob Lazar haters. I don’t like the look of the aliens in this. I’m not counting it against the movie, but I think if they looked like the greys that everyone talks about, it’d be better.
At Area 51, they start operating on an alien that Hiller dragged there and the alien comes alive and fucks up all the doctors, showing incredible strength, but I have some issue with this. Hiller knocked out the alien for over three hours with one punch BUT the alien can kick the shit out of five or six people without problems? Maybe it was a lucky punch or the alien saw what Smith did to Rock and decided to play dead to avoid embarrassment.
David and his ex-wife, Margaret, have a discussion and she notes that she never stopped loving him and he replies that “it wasn’t enough, was it?” I know why she left him. If he’s that fucking preachy to his dad and the people he works with, imagine living with him. He probably screamed at her if she didn’t recycle an empty ketchup bottle. David hasn’t moved on either and nobody he works with is dating him. If he shut the fuck up and kept his preachy shit to himself, he would be hanging out with a woman and not his creepy father.
The decision is made to nuke the aliens. That should always be the first option. If you see aliens, you arm the nukes and shove the fucking thing up their extraterrestrial ass.
David, despite being the last guy you’d want to hang out with, comes up with the idea to save the day and teams up with Hiller to take down the evil aliens by giving the ships a computer virus and shoving missiles down up their ass.
David and Hiller team up to go to the mother ship and the military from the countries from around the world team up to take down the aliens and it’s a nice thing. It’s nice seeing the countries getting along for a common cause. It makes you wish that aliens would attack the world to unite us.
INDEPENDENCE DAY is what you would expect from an alien invasion disaster movie. It’s silly, not incredibly well written, but it checks the most important box. It’s fun. The visuals are incredible and the pacing is very good. Despite my objections to David character and his constant reprimanding of other people, you can’t lose with Goldblum. He’s always entertaining and he works well with Will Smith.
I highly recommend INDEPENDENCE DAY. It might be all fluff, but it’s a fun fluff that flies by pretty quick and didn’t annoy me all that much. If you can get beyond some of the irritating characters, you’ll probably dig this very much, especially if you like seeing aliens getting their asses handed to them.
