Escape from Area 51

Wow. Just wow!

Yeah, take heed and pay attention to the reviews here for "Escape From Area 51". Why? Well, because this 2021 sci-fi comedy is exactly as bad as the other reviewers make it out to be. And not bad in the way where it becomes hilarious to watch or enjoy, nay, "Escape From Area 51" was just downright horrible.

The storyline told in "Escape From Area 51", as written by Ted Chalmers, Eric Mittleman and Carlos Perez was just not delivering anything worthwhile, and it was a massive struggle to sit through this poorly written movie, which felt more like a college film class project than an actual movie.

Not only was the storyline a swing and a miss, but the characters in the movie were every bit as off target as the storyline was. So that combination didn't really make for an entertaining movie experience. The dialogue written for the characters matched the characters in pointlessness and stupidity, so that counts for something, I guess. The acting performances were dubious.

Then there was the special effects and CGI effects. Boy, that was indeed something else. And not in a good way. The CGI in "Escape From Area 51" was just something you'd see in an early 1990s PC game. I kid you not, it was that lame and bad. It amazes me how something that laughable makes it to the screen in 2021.

I managed to suffer through about half of this ordeal of a movie, then I was good and ready to give up on everything. So I left the movie, and I will never return to watch the rest of it, because I was by no means entertained by what transpired on the screen.

Director Eric Mittleman took a swing here, but everything fell short of delivering anything worthwhile.

My rating of "Escape From Area 51" lands on a one out of ten stars. Don't waste your time, money or effort on this movie. So of us did, in lesser or greater extend, so you don't have to.

I'd have given this 2 stars as if very drunk or 14 years old, you might enjoy it in a "so bad it's good" way but I knocked a star off for being so sexist. No, not the scanty costumes, the way every male character in this show is either evil, stupid, or both. And every female character is super-competent and good. Oh, and lines about "on every planet, it is the women who step forward to sacrifice themselves". Must be news to all the dead allied soldiers littering the battlefields of WWII.

Anyway, gross misandry aside, I would love, love, love to know how this film got made. I mean, the guy playing the main baddy is actually someone I recognize from mainstream films. He's a decent actor. So what's going on here? Did he do it as a favour to a niece or something? Sexual favours? I reckon the budget for this thing is around $2000 (feeding twenty people for the two days they must have spent filming this adds up). I particularly like how every time the main villain stops to communicate with his ship on his wanderings, it's the SAME tree stump he is sitting on.

No really, anyone who knows how this got made please reply - did someone promise their daughter they could be in a movie? Was it someone's highschool project? Or just the director's way of meeting some attractive women and getting them to walk around in tight outfits?

Still, it will probably make a profit if even one person buys the DVD.

What in the ever loving hell?! Donna D'Errico and Chris Browning must have been really hard up for money! Even for b-movie, cheesy sci-fi flicks, this was AWFUL!

The "special effects" were no where near special. The "aliens" are funny, but completely computer generated. The transport beams in the original Star Trek are more impressive - even when seen today - than the effects utilized here. The use of computers actually makes the effects much less believable than the old school tech used sixty years ago.

The settings must have filmed on a literal shoestring budget. You have TWO agents sitting in a cramped basement in Area 51 running security. And by cramped, I mean that they are literally shoulder to shoulder and there are filing cabinets within arms reach on either side. These huge intergalactic space ships have "bridges" and bays that are smaller than the average bathroom. The bridge of one ship is lined with, no joke, moving blankets hanging on the walls! There is one scene where what must be stock footage from a huge "Burning Man" type festival is used, but there are, at the most, five people in any given scene.

The acting is atrocious. The blonde Area 51 agent... if she went to acting school, she had better get a refund! Donna's acting was fine, but she is a professional. Chris' acting was ok, but I think he was trying to be over the top on purpose.

Other than one scene where this random chick claims to have been impregnated by aliens and she pans down to see her slightly covered breasts, there is no nudity. Nudity is the ONE THING that these cheesy sci-fi movies have always had that made them at least worth a few minutes of watching. There is even one scene where a guy has something that looks like a nude statue on his desk and there is a large black rectangle over it that says "censored." :eye_roll:

To go along with the no nudity, there are a few lines of "men bad, women better" dialog. The "guys" are all feckless cowards, while the women are strong, don't need no man heroines. They literally say that "women are always the ones who step up to save the world." Donna's home planet is a female led, hippy commune (her word for it). Ernest only distrusts the "hot alien chick" because "males always stick together." Now, in fairness, he does get a line in about Molly only trusting Sheera because "she's a woman." But that is used just to try and make him look more like a chauvinist.

If you have an hour or so to kill and a joint rolled with nothing better to do... I guess you could do worse. Not MUCH worse, but... Otherwise... I would not recommend wasting any brain cells on this.

Remember those old cheesy SiFi's that were so bad they were hilarious, well here's a modern version. With an easy to follow predictable plot, half decent acting, humorous, and lots of female cleavage, this less than average cheesy SiFi kept me chuckling and I watched it to the very end. BTW, Nov 2023 I just saw @klaushutchinson review and now I want that $100 you offered, ha ha.

I think that a film like this, before starting it, the director and the production intend to make it disastrous. The actors are disarmingly rigid, the plot horrendous. I think this film would deserve zero as another very similar one for its sci-fi plot and acting achievements: Moontrap Target Earth.