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Shelf Beauties |
The Invasion Nicole Kidman stars as Dr. Carol
Bennell – a very stunning, gorgeous, beautiful, angelic
looking Washington, DC
psychiatrist thrust into the middle of a very average horror movie
(learn about
what happened When
Willie Met Nicole). After
a NASA catastrophe, people on Earth have started to come down with a
very strange
flu. However,
Kidman and others soon
realize the infected are acting in aggressive, non-human ways because
an alien
bacteria is changing them at the molecular level and the only hope for
survival
of the human race is to find a cure.
Can Carol find her son and
take him to safety before the infected ones get to her?
Can anyone be trusted? The
Invasion is a movie with
potential that just settles for average and humdrum.
Director Oliver Hirschbiegel (who made the
stunning film, The
Downfall) and writer Dave Kajganich fail in the biggest
task
they have as storytellers – tell me why the alien bacteria
and those who have
been infected are so bad. Sure,
we see
them do some evil things, but while they are infecting everyone on the
planet,
they also are ending wars and violence everywhere, which is kind of
cool! I want to
hate the bad guys, so I can root
for Kidman and her co-star Daniel Craig, but we don’t learn
enough to
understand the alien plans for domination, or feel compelled to boo and
hiss at
their diabolical nature. Also, The
Invasion
is a
movie seriously lacking in good dialogue.
Medical jargon is spouted off so quickly that it
sounds horribly phony
and clunky (hire some folks from ER to make it sound better). The bad
guy speeches
practically are parodies of bad guy speeches in every 2nd
rate Sci Fi
or James Bond movie ever made. Worst
of
all, the characters often come off as pathetic and laughable because of
what
they are forced to say on screen.
On the plus side, The
Invasion is not the worst movie you will ever see. Hirschbiegel does a good
job creeping out the
audience with infected humans walking around in a zombie-like state
trying to
say all of the right things to fit in to society, but they
don’t have the
emotion needed to make it feel real, which allows the audience to have
those
moments where we figure it out along with our heroes.
Also, someone had the brilliant idea making
possible for the infected ones to pass along the bacteria by barfing on
other
humans. It’s
just icky enough to have
the right effect, and I bet Kidman hasn’t had a man climb on
top of her and
puke like that since her honeymoon with Keith Urban. In the end, The
Invasion is
a movie that is passable instead of frightening, action packed and
exciting. It goes
through the motions with a love
story, relationship between a mom and kid, dueling exes and more, but
isn’t all
that memorable. 2 Waffles
(Out of 4) The Invasion is rated R for language.
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