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At The Movies: District 9. It could be so easy to cry out "Alien Nation!", and dismiss this as a knock-off - but that would be so damn lazy, and would do this movie a dire injustice. Rather than compare this with an entirely different movie from a different era, or go fishing for "references", like some reviewers, the viewer is better served by sitting back and properly absorbing all this movie tries to do - and succeeds in most triumphant fashion.
The film is completely devoid of "big names", apart from that of Peter Jackson as producer, taking that factor out of the equation. There's no Megan Fox-a-like to stick her arse or other anatomical attributes in your face. There are no connections to '80s cult toys. Stripped of Hollywood blockbustery, the film has to stand on script, performances, and how the whole thing just holds together, whilst keeping the cinema-goers' engaged, and despite the South African accents, which can take a while to get accustomed to, District 9 does just that.
What starts as a "documentary" quickly develops into something far more, as man's inhumanity pops its head up out of the rotten woodwork, and you feel a whole heap more disgust towards the humans than you could ever had for "the prawns". True, there's little explanation of the reasons for the aliens' arrival on Earth, but that really isn't important, just as almost everything about the aliens becomes secondary as South Africans come to view the "newcomers" as little more than vermin. Who's the monster now...?
CGI, much maligned of late, is called upon to bring the aliens to life, and the good people at WETA Workshops have done some good work once again, in full daylight and in grimy shadow. Effects compliment the story, rather than being used to tell the whole thing, which is in fact a real rarity - apart from the work of Pixar, I can only think of the Final Fantasy movies. Take off the Luddite blinkers for 112 minutes, friends, and afterwards, just think how hard it would have been to make this work any other way. I think you'll be glad you did.
Unless, of course, you're Nigerian. Some have taken issue with the depiction of that particular nationality in District 9, but I certainly wasn't laughing - and I don't want to get into a race argument that this film wasn't intended to address. Some of the "documentary" footage early on did, however, show human reverting to type with disturbing ease, no matter what their colour...
The Verdict... An encyclopedic knowledge of the genre is not required to thoroughly appreciate this movie, and come away thinking about just how low can humans go...? 9/10.
The film is completely devoid of "big names", apart from that of Peter Jackson as producer, taking that factor out of the equation. There's no Megan Fox-a-like to stick her arse or other anatomical attributes in your face. There are no connections to '80s cult toys. Stripped of Hollywood blockbustery, the film has to stand on script, performances, and how the whole thing just holds together, whilst keeping the cinema-goers' engaged, and despite the South African accents, which can take a while to get accustomed to, District 9 does just that.
What starts as a "documentary" quickly develops into something far more, as man's inhumanity pops its head up out of the rotten woodwork, and you feel a whole heap more disgust towards the humans than you could ever had for "the prawns". True, there's little explanation of the reasons for the aliens' arrival on Earth, but that really isn't important, just as almost everything about the aliens becomes secondary as South Africans come to view the "newcomers" as little more than vermin. Who's the monster now...?
CGI, much maligned of late, is called upon to bring the aliens to life, and the good people at WETA Workshops have done some good work once again, in full daylight and in grimy shadow. Effects compliment the story, rather than being used to tell the whole thing, which is in fact a real rarity - apart from the work of Pixar, I can only think of the Final Fantasy movies. Take off the Luddite blinkers for 112 minutes, friends, and afterwards, just think how hard it would have been to make this work any other way. I think you'll be glad you did.
Unless, of course, you're Nigerian. Some have taken issue with the depiction of that particular nationality in District 9, but I certainly wasn't laughing - and I don't want to get into a race argument that this film wasn't intended to address. Some of the "documentary" footage early on did, however, show human reverting to type with disturbing ease, no matter what their colour...
The Verdict... An encyclopedic knowledge of the genre is not required to thoroughly appreciate this movie, and come away thinking about just how low can humans go...? 9/10.
