Subject: REVIEW: INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Scott Renshaw)
Date: 1 Jul 1996 18:04:07 GMT

INDEPENDENCE DAY
                       A film review by Scott Renshaw
                        Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw

Starring:  Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd
Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid, Robert Loggia, Vivica A. Fox.
Screenplay:  Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin.
Director:  Roland Emmerich.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

     In case you are just emerging from Biosphere 2, or have been
otherwise hermetically sealed away from all media for the last twelve
months, INDEPENDENCE DAY is about an alien invasion of the earth.  20th
Century Fox began running teasers for its major summer entry sometime
around the mid-1980s; they flew planes over the cities targeted in the
film, warning of impending doom; they sent out massive theater lobby cards
which required a light rail system to get from one end to the other.
Whatever the production budget was for INDEPENDENCE DAY, the marketing
budget probably came close to matching it, and it appears to have worked.
People are a-buzz over INDEPENDENCE DAY, and theater owners successfully
lobbied to have the opening moved up to July 2nd.  All that money
spent...and by all evidence, not a dime of it went to a good script
doctor.

     By now, I am fully aware that the call for better scripts in summer
blockbusters is a cry in the wilderness; the success of TWISTER has proved
beyond a shadow of a doubt that little else matters if impressive visual
effects are on the bill of fare.  What makes INDEPENDENCE DAY so
frustrating is that its complete failure as a story does not appear to be
the result of laziness.  Director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean
Devlin, who co-wrote the screenplay, were trying to create an epic
tale-of-three-cities, beginning with the appearance over Los Angeles, New
York and Washington D.C. of giant spacecraft on July 2nd, their subsequent
attack and humanity's attempt to resist on July 4th, and several
characters are followed through those three days.  There is David Levinson
(Jeff Goldblum), a satellite engineer whose ex-wife Connie (Margaret
Colin) is the Chief-of-Staff for President Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman),
and Capt. Steven Hiller (Will Smith), a Marines pilot separated from his
girlfriend Jasmine (Vivica A. Fox), a single mother who is one of the few
survivors in Los Angeles, along with the First Lady (Mary McDonnell).

     The half-dozen or so sub-plots which wind through INDEPENDENCE DAY
suggest that Emmerich and Devlin really wanted to make human drama matter.
Instead, they created a story full of one-dimensional characters, absurd
coincidences and laughably uninteresting interpersonal conflicts.  A
couple of performances manage to rise above the nonsense -- Will Smith,
who has far more charisma than this film deserves and is almost always
entertaining when he is on-screen, which is not nearly often enough; and
Brent Spiner, who has fun as the eccentric scientist in charge of
examining the remains of the infamous Roswell, New Mexico spacecraft from
the 1950s -- but mostly there are forced emotions and nascent cliches like
the bickering-estranged-spouses-who-still-love-each-other.

     But let's get down to the real business:  at times, INDEPENDENCE DAY
looks great, a real apocalypse wow.  The dog-fight sequences are complex
and exciting, particularly a one-on-one battle between Smith's Capt.
Hiller and an alien fighter which whizzes through canyons at break-neck
speed.  At other times, believe it or not, it looks cheap.  Some of the
digital effects are too soft around the edges, and INDEPENDENCE DAY skimps
on a face-to-face showdown with the aliens.  That is a big mistake,
because the only time in INDEPENDENCE DAY when there is any genuine
tension is when scientists get hold of -- and have to deal with -- an
alien survivor.  There is something cold about an Ultimate Battle which
comes down to a showdown between ships.

     Then again, a swarming alien ground invasion might have given
Emmerich and Devlin just one more better film to crib from.  INDEPENDENCE
DAY feels like a hodge-podge of quotes from science fiction classics like
STAR WARS (the "mother ship cruising overhead" opening shot, as well as
the trench run finale), RETURN OF THE JEDI (the multi-craft dog-fight) and
ALIEN (the design of the aliens).  Even the film's self-promoted nickname,
"ID4," evokes TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY's "T2" campaign from a few years
ago.  To top things off, the president gives what is intended to be a
rousing address to his hopelessly outnumbered troops; it was supposed to
be his "St. Crispin's Day" speech, but it's so lame it makes you wondered
how this guy was ever elected _class_ president.  INDEPENDENCE DAY appears
to be the meticulously constructed result of one of those screenwriting
programs which are supposed to give you all the elements for a complete
story...and of course, all those elements come from other films.  You
can't buy inspiration, and INDEPENDENCE DAY is woefully short on anything
that rouses the imagination.  It's a kick-ass trailer that's wagging a
dog.

     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 days the earth stood still:  4.

--
Scott Renshaw
Stanford University
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw