'Evolution' fails as a comedy

By Joko E.H. Anwar

Evolution (** out of four stars); Comedy/Action, 105 minutes; Starring David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Julianne Moore, Seann William Scott, Ted Levine; Directed by Ivan Reitman; A Columbia Pictures/DreamWorks Presentation

JAKARTA (JP): A meteor crashes somewhere in the Arizona desert and turns out to be carrying alien organisms which soon start causing problems for local residents.

Sound familiar? Well, in this age, movies with truly original ideas belong on the endangered species list, so you can usually only hope that filmmakers recycle old plots in an inventive way to make it feel fresh.

Unfortunately, the only change here seems to be that respected comedy director Reitman seems to have evolved into a second-rate filmmaker.

You will find it hard to believe that the director of Ghostbusters could make such a lame film, even after several flukes that include unfunny comedy Father's Day.

It is also safe to say that David Duchovny has made a very bad decision in his film career.

He left The X-Files, which basically follows an interesting story of a conspiracy involving aliens taking over the world, and now stars in a lame comedy about aliens wreaking havoc in one town.

He should swallow his pride and go back to the TV series as he is certainly missed by many there.

If the film was meant to be a parody, then it fails miserably because it is too full of its own serious flaws to be able to mock other movies.

Instead, the film looks like a belated rip-off of the highly enjoyable Men in Black and has a very similar plot.

Even worse, Reitman seems to have also ripped off his own Ghostbusters films, which Evolution never comes close to being as enjoyable as.

This is one of those times when film reviewers do not feel guilty about revealing the whole story, since there is nothing new in the film anyway (don't worry, I still won't do it).

Yes, there is a mildly amusing scene where an alien dinosaur runs amok in a mall, but we've already seen it in the trailer anyway.

Seann William Scott plays Wayne Gray, a loser (again) who tries hard to become a fire-fighter but never succeeds.

While Wayne is in the desert practicing with an inflatable female doll for his fire department entrance exam, a meteor almost hits him.

The next morning, a community college professor, Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and his geologist buddy Harry Block (Orlando Jones) pay a visit to the crash site and discover that the meteor is emitting some type of fluid.

When Kane takes a sample of the fluid and checks it under a microscope, discovering that it contains single-cell organisms which multiply rapidly.

When the two return to the meteor site the next morning, they find alien plants growing around the meteor. There are also millions of leech-like creatures there.

Kane takes some of the creatures to his lab (again) and discovers that the animals also multiply rapidly.

Meanwhile, fate delivers wannabe-fireman Gray to the two scientists after the three of them bring down an alien dinosaur loose in the mall, in a goofy way a la Ghostbusters, and they become the toughest alien-fighting heroes in the city.

Meanwhile, a government scientist named Allison Reed (Julianne Moore), who originally decided to keep the trio away from the case, eventually decides to work with the three men.

Before too long, local residents find all sorts of weird- looking vicious creatures.

It seems that the creatures evolve rapidly from single-cell organisms into dangerous animals and it is up to our scientists and one moron to stop the evolution.

It was reported that the film was originally written as a thriller and then the filmmakers decided to turn it into a comedy.

Well, after you watch it, you will agree that the film would have been a disaster if played seriously, but it still definitely fails as a comedy.

The script, which is credited to three people, is full of silly-but-not-funny conversations and lame jokes.

After a bunch of films that rely heavily on computer generated images to create all kinds of creatures, seeing it again in Evolution, which offers no good story to go along with, is such a boring experience.

What did the filmmakers expect when they made this alien/dinosaur film? They should have known that they had to offer more than the highly entertaining BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs.

If you haven't seen Walking With Dinosaurs, the VCDs are available here.The series poses as a documentary and cleverly speculates on what happened in the Jurassic age. It is much more enjoyable than watching the dinos in Evolution.

I must admit that there are still some funny moments in the film, but you will probably hate yourself for laughing because you already hate the film by the time they arrive.

And just like any other film about aliens, in the end our heroes discover something that is supposed to kill the creatures.

If folks in Independence Day got their inspiration from a Coca-Cola can, heroes in Evolution find a way so silly to get rid of the aliens that it is just not funny. I won't spoil it for you.

In short, this comedy is strictly for undemanding audiences.