INDEPENDENCE DAY
A film review by Chuck Dowling
Copyright 1996 Chuck Dowling
Independence Day (1996) ***** - C:Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Robert Loggia, Randy Quaid, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Brent Spiner, Harvey Fierstein, Harry Connick Jr.
This is the greatest summer movie ever. I repeat, this is the greatest summer movie of all-time. This is exactly what a summer movie should be. It's fun, loud, tense, exciting, action-packed, and it will keep your attention for two and a half hours.
Unless you've been living in a cave for the last year, you've seen the previews and know what the film is about. If for some reason you don't, here's the plot: aliens start to destroy the earth and we have to stop them. That's it. That's all there is. But it's more than enough. With that you get mass destruction, hundreds of human and alien aircraft dogfighting in the skies, aliens here on earth, the inside of an alien mothership, and lots of suspense. This is a great roller-coaster ride of a movie.
That's not to say it doesn't have it's problems. The plot isn't exactly new. Some scenes seem to be "inspired" from several other films including the Star Warstrilogy, The Right Stuff,War of the Worldsand many of the disaster films from the 70s. The music, which is good, just seems to be poured on a little too much at times. Also, Randy Quaid plays a drunk in the film who claims aliens kidnapped him several years ago. Yet, even though there are aliens running around and alien ships are destroying the planet, whenever Quaid mentions that he was kidnapped everyone acts like 'Yeah, yeah, sure you were, ok whatever," and then roll their eyes like he's crazy. But, all of these things are trivial because as I said before, this is the greatest summer movie ever.
To be a successful summer movie (or any movie for that matter) the film needs to make you forget your troubles and entertain you. ID4 succeeds fantastically. For two and a half hours you will completely forget about what's going on in your life and be completely engrossed in the lives of the people on the screen. ID4 needs to be seen in a theater to be appreciated because it will likely lose most of it's impact on TV. Director Roland Emmerich completely redeems himself after the dreadfully boring Stargate.
-- Chuck Dowling
Please visit my movie reviews web site at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ You'll be glad you did.
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