"Welcome to Earth!"
This may just be the greatest movie ever made..by man...ever. Don't get me wrong, it's dumb. It's straight-up retarded by movie standards. Cheesy dialogue. Suspect acting. A total disregard for common sense and reality. But goddamn does it know it's dumb! And it bathes in its own stupidity. This is the definition of a "popcorn movie." It's not trying to be anything but entertaining. And in that endeavor, it succeeds.
Aliens have come to strip mine earth because instead of funding renewable energy sources, they allowed Republicans to convince people that fracking the shit out of their planet was the best thing to do. So they show up on Earth and just blow the holy fuck out of every imaginable landmark possible - the Empire State Building, the White House, and whatever they blow up in Los Angeles. Because the logical thing to do if you're there to mine natural resources is to blow the fuck out of the entire planet. The only hope for the human race is a black guy, a drunk, and a bunch of Jews. AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
I just love how unapologetically stupid this movie is. After Will Smith (hot off his Fresh Prince stint) crashes with the alien spaceship, the alien (who is a brine shrimp in a suit of armor) emerges from the ship and Will Smith punches it in the face...while it's wearing ARMOR...and knocks it out. What? Its armor protected it from a plane crash, but it couldn't protect it from Will Smith's fist? That's how they roll in Bel-Air, bitch!
Then there's the great moment in Area 51 where President Bill Pullman (who keeps voting for this guy for president?) gets attacked by the brine shrimp telepathically and it allows President Pullman to see its thoughts and quickly blurt out an attempt to create a storyline. "I saw its thoughts. They move from planet to planet blowing up miniatures of important landmarks." Again...WHAT? Why would the alien be thinking of that at that moment? Wouldn't it be thinking, "I'm totally going to kill this guy because he'll probably stop being cast in movies anyways after the 90s and just do shitty TV shows?" That alien knew what it was talking about.
And then there's the ending...WOW! Dumbest ending ever? Possibly. Jeff Goldblum, super-Jew, invents a COMPUTER VIRUS that corrupts the aliens' defense systems, shuts down their force fields, and allows a drunk Randy Quaid (who didn't even know he was shooting a movie) to kamikaze into their spaceship's giant wang and take the whole thing down. SERIOUSLY? What, these aliens don't have Norton anti-virus where they're from? Did they forget to download the latest updates?
This is a constant problem in alien movies. If aliens are smart enough to create intergalactic space travel, something we are centuries from achieving, then everything they do has to be on that level. They can't be taken down by a COMPUTER VIRUS (or locked in a closet, M Night). They would have a fucking firewall, bitch! They would have Norton version 4000 + 1. It's dumb. It's so, so dumb.
Still, despite this movie riding the short bus to school, it's still a fun movie. I could watch that White House blow up all day long, and when that alien spaceship first emerges from the storm cloud...that's a great movie moment. This movie will forever hold a special place in my heart because after I saw it on opening weekend with my sisters, I went home and basically recreated the entire movie with Power Rangers and Barbies...and my version contained less plot holes than the original.
Why It's Awesome: Aliens show up and blow shit up. End. Oh, and Will Smith punches an alien wearing a metal exoskeleton in the face and knocks it out. "Now that's what I call a close encounter."
Best Quote:
Russell: All right, you alien assholes! In the words of my generation: Up Yours!!!
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