Movie Review

Alien vs. Predator (PG-13)

Gregory Freitas

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Hollywood.com Says
Alien vs. Predator isn't terrible, and that shock alone is almost enough to recommend it. The lack of any great shocking jolts, however, pretty much destroys the only good reason to see it in a theater.

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 ginormous, 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 articularly odd that they have suddenly come upon two uber-races of slimed out killers battling towards Apocalypse in an ancient thunderdome 2000 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 living on the banks of the Amazon could tell the difference.

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Everyone's a Critic

"It's not much of a movie, but it's a geek's paradise."
Jeremiah Kipp, Slant Magazine

"Following on the heels of such mostly unmemorable super-monster matchups as Freddy vs. Jason and Godzilla vs. Mothra, Alien vs. Predator proves once again that it doesn't pay to double your trouble."
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

"Alien vs. Predator is an example of moviemaking at its most cynically commercial, a transparent attempt to jumpstart two run-down franchises, or at least to squeeze the last couple of bucks out of them."
Gary Dowell, Dallas Morning News

"It's not that I especially like the Alien or Predator pictures, or the overblown work of director Paul W.S. Anderson. It's that I'm a "versus" completist, in spite (or maybe because) of the fact that there has never been a good Monster X vs. Monster Y picture and probably never will be."
David Edelstein, Slate.com

"...the unsatisfying AVP isn't exciting, scary or even particularly gory--and the yawns far exceed the modest body count."
Lou Lumenick, N.Y. Post