Subject: REVIEW: INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Ralph Benner)
Date: 10 Sep 1996 18:30:26 GMT

INDEPENDENCE DAY
                       A film review by Ralph Benner
                        Copyright 1996 Ralph Benner

	Would INDEPENDENCE DAY be a better movie without all that Area 51 
bs? Did director Roland Emmerich and his co-writer Dean Devlin get their 
filler by watching those sci-fi nuts on Larry King's TNT special? (I 
confess to seeing it -- twice; anyone who imports a desk and uses the 
sunset in the near-Roswell desert as his backdrop is a showman deserving 
of an encore.) Would ID4  be more receptive without Bill Pullman mouthing 
perfunctory lines that flash in our heads before his cue? Without Randy 
Quaid's boozer-turned-hero? Without Will Smith a little too conveniently 
landing his chopper at his decimated base to be greeted by his gal pal? 
(Vivica Fox is, though, the prettiest black squeeze to grace movies in 
years.) Let's face it: like JURASSIC PARK, ID4 is just okay. We don't have 
to be movie addicts or snob technocrats to roll our eyes or turn from the 
screen when Quaid is on; enjoyable at the "suspend disbelief" level up to 
a point, we all probably begin to quietly mumble Oh no, they're not going 
to let him do that and sure enough Harvey Fierstein does his toxic 
schtick, and Oh God, it's another tiring mutation of Ridley Scott's aliens 
-- this time much smarter: they're hegemonic invaders. We're going to ID4 
to see the long-advertised special effects, which are, alternately, wowie, 
good and blurry. There's one huge collective disappointment: the mother 
space ship and its 15 mile-in-diameter babies. We never get near enough to 
them for clear-eyed views; just when we think we will -- like when one of 
the midget terrors comes out of its fiery CLOSE ENCOUNTERS cloud over San 
Francisco -- it's gone; this magnificent "Phenomena" isn't held long 
enough for us to perceive its paralyzing other-world majesty, what should 
be one of those "Wow!" moments that only movies can provide. And inside 
the mother ship, things get awfully hazy, we can't get a techno fix. (We 
get better views of the movie in the MVP licensing publication 
Independence Day, the Official Collector's Magazine.) The lack of the 
luxury to linger is a mistake; this movie is really all about the terror 
of technological awesomeness and in order to feel the fright and panic, in 
order to respond to what's pretending to be larger than we are, we need 
some realistic impressions -- we need to be convinced of the expensive 
razzle dazzle we're watching. On this level JURASSIC  PARK succeeds: if 
we're unavoidably aware of the mechanical contraptions and 
computer-generated effects, we're in awfully close proximity; we marvel at 
how Spielberg and his Merlinettes give their monsters a real charge. In 
ID4 we want to ooh and aah too, we want to get caught up in the War of the 
Worlds, yet we're detached -- we're watching FX that initially intimidate, 
only to become elusive to our senses; they stay "out there" for too long. 
(And sometimes the effects are shoddy, like the exteriors of the Air Force 
One model, and the aliens' humpy fighters look like those plastic HairWiz 
cutters you buy at Walgreen's.) Actually, the movie's trailer, which kept 
Fox from having to spend much money on ads, has been out there for too 
long: our politics aside, when the White House explodes, the audience I 
saw the movie with didn't cheer or react demonstrably in any way -- not 
like it was reported from theatres during first screenings. We've been too 
prepared for it; even people who haven't gone to the movies in years have 
the scene burned into ever-lasting memory. The explosion works against the 
picture in another way too: it's pop 'em sock 'em sci fi pyrotechnics but 
it's also pop culture debasement, maybe not too different from women's 
Stars & Stripes halter tops. (A wit who saw the movie early in its release 
observed, "Titsnflaggers who want a Constitutional amendment outlawing 
flag burning seem to be the ones hooting it up the most when the White 
House gets it.") What laughs there are come out of a peculiar 
embarrassment: I got a good one over the fact that there was little 
objection to blowing my town Houston to bits. No one will win any blue 
screen acting awards, with the exception of a possible Razzie nomination 
for Quaid. It's Jeff Goldblum's good luck to be cast in blockbusters; I 
still don't know why it's taking so long for him to play opposite Barbra 
Streisand -- their ethnic beauty should be able to ignite a raucous 
romantic comedy. Pullman's wonderfully deep-octaved voice helps, as does 
the "comeback kid" persona. Playing his Dee Dee Myers, Margaret Colin's a 
pleasant clone of Mary Louise Parker and Elizabeth Perkins. ID4 has made 
its virtual three hundred million dollar domestic gross in the same way 
JURASSIC PARK did -- by giving summer movie audiences the stories they 
love but movies they end up feeling indifferent about. A loving update of 
Ray Harryhausen's "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers," it's not much more than 
a joint of Roswellian hemp from which outer space buffs can get a so-so 
buzz.