Subject: Review: Alien: Resurrection (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Chuck Dowling)
Date: 14 Jan 1998 17:09:22 GMT

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 -- <[email-masked]>

Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed at Chuck's Movie Reviews.
Web address: http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/