AVP - Alien Vs. Predator Review

"AVP - Alien Vs. Predator" reviews

Movie

AVP - Alien Vs. Predator

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-01-05 00:05:22

Rating

1.5/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

Ah, the joy of low expectations. Hardcore fans -- or those who expect the quality of the original 'Alien' movies -- will likely be disappointed by 'Alien vs. Predator.' Everybody else is in for a rather entertaining, end-of-summer action camp-fest, silly like 'The Mummy' but with far more disgusting enemies.

Story

Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen, in a nod to 'Aliens' and 'Alien 3') is a billionaire industrialist whose satellites have picked up massive amounts of heat emanating from Antarctica. Global warming run amok? Sorry, nothing quite that sinister. Turns out it's just an Alien, chained up for centuries and feeling increasingly maternal. Armed with a computerized blueprint of a enormous, ancient, underground temple, a team of scientists headed by guide Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan, from 'Out of Time'), and anthropologist Sebastian De Rosa (Raoul Bova, from 'Under the Tuscan Sun'), are sent to explore, as Predators watch over them menacingly from the mother ship above. The humans soon discover that they are the undercard on a millennia-old battle royale, in which Predators return to Earth every 100 years to do battle with Aliens. These Aliens prove to be so obstinate in their ickiness however, that a Predator and a human are forced to team up.

Acting

The filmmakers appear to have cast one speaking part from every single country in Europe. What else would we expect from a "German-Anglo-Canadian-Hungarian co-production"? The tradeoff for all those tax incentives is an array of confusing accents that make the stilted dialogue rather amusing. Bova, with his thick Italian accent and Calvin Klein model looks, provokes plenty of snickers as the intuitive temple-digger, warning of "la luna cacciatore, zee hunter's moon". Ewen Bremner (Spud from 'Trainspotting') as a young geologist is even more difficult to understand, and that's with English as his native tongue. Agathe De La Bouhaye provides some female eye candy. (That is, of course, until an Alien face-hugger ruins her looks and her figure by bursting from her chest cavity moments later.) Lathan is fine in the lead, but following the likes of Sigourney Weaver and Arnold Schwarzenegger is a thankless mission. The filmmakers should have just gone for broke and pumped her up into a complete badass. With the entire picture an exercise in goofy excess. Why back down and make the heroine even remotely normal? And although the much-debated alliance of humans and Predators isn't as far-fetched as it might seem, there is still a very strange, tender, sexually charged moment between the two species that sent the room I was in into paroxysms of laughter. If AVP2 is on the back burner at Fox, they might want to give Thomas Ian Griffith a ring.

Direction

Fans of the hardcore violence of these series are probably confused by the kiddie-friendly PG-13 rating. They shouldn't be. This is most definitely a hard PG-13, with all the violence and profanity the law allows. We witness numerous impalings of all three species, although the camera doesn't linger quite the way it did in the originals. It isn't very scary though, and that's a disappointment. The main problem is that the humans have absolutely zero invested in the battle before them. They don't even act as if it's particularly odd that they have suddenly come upon two uber-races of slimed out killers battling towards Apocalypse in an ancient thunderdome 2,000 feet below the South Pole. At one point Alexa reminds us, "If these things get out, it could mean the end of the human race." Oh yeah, that. Director Paul W. S. Anderson has made quite a career by catering to the Comic Con crowd, with 'Resident Evil' and 'Mortal Kombat' already on his resume. That he should need to include his middle initials to avoid confusion with the other Paul ('Boogie Nights') Anderson is laughable. A six-year-old child living on the banks of the Amazon could tell the difference.

Bottom Line

'Alien vs. Predator' isn't terrible, and that shock alone is almost enough to recommend it. Sure, it's campy, but so were the originals. The lack of any great shocking jolts however pretty much destroys the only good reason to see it in a theater.

Copyright © CinemaSource 2008.

Movie

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2005-10-25 21:37:36

Provider

MRIB

Review

On their own, the Alien and the Predator are two of the most revered sci-fi villains extant. Capable of reducing their human prey to mincemeat in seconds, the pair have thrilled in six separate films (Alien 4, Predator 2) so the thought of putting them together in a movie must have been a fantasy for fans everywhere. Then the studio bosses elected to put director Paul WS Anderson in charge and it all went pretty pear-shaped.

The premise is quite simple - for Anderson it normally is. Ailing billionaire industrialist Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen) is putting together a crack team of experts to investigate a strange pyramid his satellites have found deep under the ice of Antarctica. But once down in the cold and dark, this team find they are not alone and it's not long before, one by one, they're either being infected by face-huggers or wiped out by the Predators, whose weapons they've accidentally nicked.

Predictable is not a word to use lightly, but AvP deserves such a tag. As we've come to expect from the Alien franchise, we get our tough and spirited female heroine in the shape of Blue Crush's Sanaa Lathan. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but when the script requires her to arm herself with dead Alien body parts and team up with a Predator to fight their common enemy, then you know things have just gone crazy.

The pyramid is quite a nice touch, and the baddies look as sinister as ever, but the plot is so pointless and insulting that any good work elsewhere is immediately undone. And the finale, ripped straight from Jurassic Park, is a huge disappointment.

The real shame here, though, is that in the hands of a better director / writer, AvP could have been a triumph. Instead it's a major blot on both franchises. Maybe, therefore, it's best to treat it like Bond fans regard Never Say Never Again and pretend it didn't happen.

Copyright © MRIB 2005.