INDEPENDENCE DAY
A film review by Kevin Maguire
Copyright 1996 Kevin Maguire
Director: Roland Emmerich Producer: Dean Devlin Stars: Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Harvey Feirstein, Randy Quaid, Mary McDonnell, James Rebhorn, Judd Hirsch, Harry Connick Jr., Robert Loggia.
Moviegoers like two things about summer movies. For June and July, we ask for big, slick, hard-nosed thrillers. In August, we check our watches, and go down to the playhouse to watch films that prospered at Cannes and Sundance.
You would expect that INDEPENDENCE DAY(Twentieth Century Fox, PG-13) would be exactly number one. But really, ID4 is engineered so that ALL can see the forthright special effects. But really, the filmakers are eliminating where they can get the meat, the action. But no, not one star says a swear. I would expect if a 15 mile long object was hovering into your atmosphere, SOMEONE would say an expletive.
Let's steer clear of the complaints for a second, of which I could go on and on about. ID4 sets out to do something that it virtually can't lose at. It's a 75 million dollar picture, with the Empire State Building, the White House and other objects crashing to the ground. I mean, how could the audience be disapointed? The comedy is an engaging part, because it puts more into the characters that a regular action film would. Will Smith plays a fighter pilot, and his lines are well written. he's given one funny line after the other in a desert.
But the thing is, when is the comedy appropriate? When Will Smith was in the desert, it was only several minutes after his buddy, played by Harry Connick Jr., was shot down and killed. Smith even laughs when he finds the body, and the alien that gobbled it up. Also, it a scene before that, the pilots are preparing a full-frontal attack on the ship, when we find Will Smith delivering lines again. ID4 seems to have fallen victim to the TWISTER syndrom. The filmmakers, too busy with high level effects, don't bother to give the film any emotional base. It's all action, so essentially, we can't follow the actors, and we can't understand what they do and why they do it.
Of course, ID4 will keep you, at least for a good half of it, out of your seat. The advertising campaign, however, has put too many of the films shots in the previews, so I had seen half of them already.
ID4, althought not realizing it's trying, is striving to make STAR WARS 4. They're trying to reincarnate the Han Solo character as Will Smith. Of course, Will Smith is not as good an actor as Harrison Ford, and never will be. They try to put Luke Skywalker as the President, played by Bill Pullman, whose wife is in a plane crash, then is discovered by Will Smith's wife. After all this, the movie kills her.
My final complaint, however, goes to the writers lack of ingenuity in creating new characters. Jeff Goldblum not only is a blueprint on Ian, the mathematician from JURASSIC PARK, but he has the same lines as him in the end of the movie, saying "Go faster. Must go faster." And Randy Quaid, from the upcoming KINGPIN, is redoing his part from the NATIONAL LAMPOON movies. Ditto for Harvey Feirstein, who plays the gay guy over and over again, so that it gets repetitive.
The summer is moving pretty fast, but so far, I'm still waiting for the emotional part of it. Which brings up a pretty interesting point, did ID4 show at Sundance...???
Rating : B-
Kevin Maguire
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