ALIEN RESURRECTION Movie review by Chuck Dowling Copyright 1998 - Chuck's Movie Reviews http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/
Alien Resurrection (1997) *** out of ***** - Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya, Michael Wincott. Written by: Joss Whedon. Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Running Time: 118 minutes.
*** This review contains spoilers. ***
"Alien Resurrection", the fourth film in the popular sci-fi/horror series, is a slight improvement over the third installment, but overall is a disappointment.
Sigourney Weaver is surprisingly back as Ellen Ripley. I say surprisingly since the character killed herself at the end of the third film. This one is set 200 years after part three, and idiotic scientists have cloned Ripley in order to extract the alien queen she had been carrying inside her at the time of her death. These scientists hope to "train" the aliens. Amazing how after another 200 years of human evolution that scientists are still stupid. Well sure enough, the aliens reproduce and break free to terrorize everyone.
None of the characters being chased by the aliens are the slightest bit compelling. You don't care if any of them escape or not. You've got the head idiot scientist, a band of space pirates (of which the only interesting one, Michael Wincott, is killed immediately), another android (Ryder, who's character contributes nothing to any aspect of the film), and Ripley, who really isn't Ripley so again, who cares.
Some other minor problems I had: At one moment, the cloned Ripley doesn't know what a fork is, yet soon after she's got a witty one-liner for any occasion. Another thing, too many "witty" one-liners from the cast. Good to know that the aliens aren't too much of a concern anymore. Along those same lines, Dan Hedaya's character is just too cartoonish for the film. Let's make a serious film here people. I'm also curious why after all these hundreds of years of human and scientific evolution that spacecraft are still dirty, grimy, bulky and blocky. It didn't take long after the invention of the automobile to make it a nice looking, streamlined machine, so why after so many hundreds of years are spaceships still clunky and crappy looking?
About the film's finale and lead up to that finale, haven't we seen this before? Blow up the ship and blow the alien out into space? All I kept thinking was how much better the ending of part three was since it was something completely different. The ship then at the end crashes into earth, seemingly destroying a couple of continents (!), and this is treated as a good thing? What gives here?
Weaver keeps voicing in interviews about how she likes the erotic aspects of the series. Personally, I just don't get what's erotic about monsters, blood, and goo. But, there's plenty of "erotica" here for you if you happen to agree with Weaver.
"Alien Resurrection" starts out very intriguing. Information is only given to the audience gradually, and therefore the first third of the film is quite compelling. But as soon as the aliens escape, the film just becomes a mindless bloody gorefest. If this wasn't an "Alien" film then I'd have to just catagorize it as a shameless "Alien" rip-off.
Since there will probably never be an "Aliens vs. Predator" film, then there's really only two things I'd like to see if the series continues. Either aliens make it to Earth somehow (even though this film manages to completely trounce that premise by constantly telling us what a hellhole Earth has become), or we find the alien's homeworld WITH only the intent of destroying these things for good. Anything aside from that will most likely be just as disappointing as this effort was. [R]
-- Chuck Dowling --
Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed at Chuck's Movie Reviews. Web address: http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/
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