इंडिपेंडेंस डे

Turn your brain off and just enjoy it. If you're a hard ass, skip it.

Will Smith and Goldblum together is an A+ in my book.

Highly recommended!

I am just shocked at all the negative reviews by pseudo-intellectuals saying the film was heavily flawed, incomprehensible, devoid of any merit, and "lame", to quote a few. What were they expecting? A remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sure, I am not going to pretend the film does not has many glaring weaknesses. The plot is hardly original; its execution is even less inspiring. Roland Emmerich goes out of his way to use every cliche in the book, over-sentimentality, weak, flat characterizations, incredible jumps in logic and reasoning made on the viewer, and the use of special effects to overcome these shortcomings. But what some of the reviewers seemed to have missed, and its there as substantiated by the huge popularity of the film, is heart. The film has a lot of heart. It makes you feel good after watching it. And although that quality does not make it a great film, it certainly makes it a good film in my book. The film is vastly entertaining, very suspenseful, a delight for the eyes with dazzling special effects, and even has some dialogue that does just rise above its hackneyed origins. The acting is adequate all around with no one pulling off a great performance, but a few doing marvelous jobs with what they have to work with. Judd Hirsch easily out acts his fellow colleagues as a Jewish father with a gift for common sense and lack of tact. Jeff Goldblum also gives a pretty good performance as his son. Yeah, Will Smith is just Will Smith..lots of one liners and little meat so to speak. But he is bearable. Watch for Brent Spiner in an outrageous role as a hippie scientist. His performance is a real hoot! If you are looking for philosophical science fiction, this is not it. See Starship Troopers(a great film). This is just good old Americans against the universe stuff, lots of action but little substance. But whatever it may have as its faults, it is a fun, happy, sad, charming, engrossing film to watch...time and time again.

Giant, hostile, alien spaceships appear overnight to move on Earth's natural resources; humanity's last, desperate hope is a shaky plan involving a captured UFO from the 1950s and an old PowerBook laptop. Seems like this one was a guilty-pleasure classic from opening day. ID4 isn't well-written and constantly bathes itself in dense layers of cheese, but it tries hard, most the character arcs connect and the big special effects hold up quite well, despite their age.

For a movie that's so thoroughly reliant on spectacle, that last point is pretty important. The power of watching the White House or Empire State Building burst into a billion bitty pieces is still there, irresistible, while the magnitude of the invading fleet remains immense, and I think both can be attributed to the production's choice to eschew then-new CG techniques in favor of a large, intricately detailed stable of miniatures. We get a few hiccups, like the obviously green-screened fighter jets or the absurd visual of a golden retriever leaping to slow-motion safety through a fiery inferno, but for the most part it all looks great and it's still easy to get sucked into the experience.

Of course, the whole thing is over-acted to death. Roland Emmerich has never been one to bring out nuance from his cast, and this is an awfully shallow effort, even by his standards. Bill Pullman nails the big motivational speech, set to a telegraphed swell of patriotic symphony, but otherwise lacks conviction as a limp, reactive PotUS. Randy Quaid is a cheap xerox of every alien abduction stereotype to ever enter pop culture. Jeff Goldblum is naturally quirky enough to make his role worthwhile, but it takes every bit of his innate charismatic magnetism to overcome the dumb plot developments. Will Smith is the only unequivocal success, barking and fist-pumping his way to bonafide action hero status in a simple but essential role as a beefy marine / pure force of will.

From a critical perspective, this is cinematic junk food. Big bangs and shiny lights to dazzle the box office crowd, with a few easy jokes to lighten the mood. But yet, there's something else to it, something essential and inexplicable. It's just raw, simple fun, I suppose, that makes no apologies for how it acts or what it aims to be. It won't make you think or weep, but you'll feel, and that's worth something.

Will Smith at his cocky best. Jeff Goldblum doing Jeff Goldblum stuff. What's not to love. The movie is really funny. Undoubtedly over the top. The story isn't hard to follow. But that suits the pace of the movie. The special effects for the time were excellent and still hold up reasonably well in 2024. The cast is well drilled with no one having a difficult task as most of the characters are pretty uncomplicated. Goldblum is a real treat as is his father and colleague. The drunken pilot is ridiculous. But endearing also. Smith is cocky and slick throughout. Brent spiner plays the emotionally absent scientist very well also. Easy a 7.5. It does not require a brain to watch. It has a load of elements of movies of that era. But it knits them all together into a coherent and enjoyable couple of hours. You can't help but smile and root for the good guys. Great movie. 7.5.

I wonder why Arthur C. Clarke wasn't given a nod for the idea of the scene seems to have come directly from 'Childhood's End'. I haven't read all the reviews, but it seems some points have not been addressed; for example, world unity. The world is so divided by ideologies, language, beliefs, economic conditions, currency, etc. that it would take a world-wide threat (like an alien attack or another black plague) to unify all the people. This film, shallow as it is in other respects, illustrates that. Also, this film was 'centered' in America, so the film makers naturally concentrated on America, with 'cameos' of members of other countries. I resent being told that 'the worst part of the movie was America' (see above comment about divisiveness, negativism and just plain rudeness). Obviously, I am American, but I have Swedish and English (and other) roots. I consider myself a citizen of Earth. The Earth, this little blue planet is my home. So, let's try to take that phrase 'think globally' seriously. I rather liked the movie with it's humor and special effects (I guess I'm easily entertained), and my wife always cries at the sad parts. Movies are like beauty - in the eye and ear of the beholder. It's easy to find fault with things, but much harder to find the good, the higher ground, the motivation. That's why it's easy to be a critic! Makes you wonder what kind of movies the reviewers rave over...