Oct 102001
 
four reels

A meteorite hits the Arizona desert, carrying simple, one celled aliens that have the ability to evolve billions of time faster than life on Earth. Community college teacher, Harry Block (Orlando Jones), and his biology teacher/ex-government scientist friend, Ira Kane (David Duchovny), investigate, and figure this is their ticket to bigger things.  However, General Russell Woodman (Ted Levine) and CDC investigator Allison Reed (Julianne Moore) step in and exclude them, until the aliens develop into organisms that could wipe out all life on Earth. It’s up to Ira, Harry, Allison, and reject fireman Wayne Grey (Seann William Scott), to save the day.

Director Ivan Reitman returns to Ghostbusters by way of a 50s alien invasion flick and ends up with Evolution.  Its similarities to that funnier film are obvious and will smack you on the head as you watch. A small group of good natured, but flawed friends find themselves fighting little problems that soon grow into enormous monsters that only can be stopped with an excessive amount of goo splattering on our heroes.  The group, wise-cracking all the way, are stifled by arrogant and unpleasant government agents, who end up making things a whole lot worse. The team members include faculty members of a college who don’t do their jobs, a brainy scientist, an idiot, a porn-lover, a smart-ass, a member who joins the group halfway through the film, and an attractive girl/love interest who doesn’t accept the good guys’ ideas at first, but is won over. Now just collect those characters, merge them together and split them into five people for Ghostbusters and four for Evolution.

Yup, Reitman ripped off himself, but if you are going to steal from a film, you could do a lot worse than Ghostbusters. Sure Evolution is weaker than Ghostbusters in every way, but that still leaves a lot of room to be entertaining. And entertaining it is. What’s amazing is how fresh the jokes are. Duchovny and Jones strike the right notes as if they’re an old comic standup team, and are the heart of the film. Moore and Scott toss in a few good lines as well as supplying the film’s slapstick (although that’s secondary). The dialog is rapid fire, which makes sense considering the entire movie is in overdrive.  Since we’ve seen this story before, Reitman doesn’t bother pretending we need time to work it out. It’s full speed ahead.  For the big government vs. scientists confrontation, he sets it up so you know it’s there, and then bam!, were off on attacking monsters and humor. If you don’t like a joke here or Moore falling down there, there’s another comedy bit already going. It clocks in at 101 minutes, and I bet they started with a 2 hour script, and chopped.

The creature effects work on an “alien monster” level and on a “cute, silly-looking beast” level. With insanely rapid “evolution,” Phil Tippett had an opportunity to make creatures to please every taste.

Watch Ghostbusters. If you say to yourself afterward, “I’d like more of that,” skip  Ghost Busters II and take a look at Evolution.

 Aliens, Reviews Tagged with: