District 9: Nah.

DISTRICT 9! You may recall how pumped I was to see this movie when I saw the preview during Bruno. Well....

1. The concept is very interesting: after an alien invasion, humans exploit the aliens instead of aliens exploiting humans. I don't think I've ever seen that before in a sci-fi movie. It was an interesting twist.

2. I read a review prior to seeing the film that talked about the apartheid allegory. (The aliens are in Johannesburg). That, too, was a chin-scratcher, and hopefully I would have picked that up without having it explained to me beforehand. (Although, literal animal I am, I wouldn't put money on it).

3. I love alien movies, as I mentioned. But I really wish D9 would have focused more on the initial mother ship landing. I know it's been done to death, but the film opened with this mothership just hovering over Johannesburg, where it had been for the past two decades. I like how the focus was on the aliens living among us, but we could have fleshed it out a little better to begin with. Also, while the producers try to give aliens human qualities, they did not really show how the aliens would have acted absent earthly influence. Showing an alien an eviction notice and having him sign it was beyond parody for me, and I think that's where I started to get irrevocably irritated.

4. The aliens' appearance was too cheesy. I'm sick of aliens looking like insects/monsters. I don't know what aliens WOULD look like, but insects is not high on my list of probables. The alien father-son thing was annoying too.

5. It took me until No. 5 to realize that I have nothing to say about this movie that's even remotely interesting. I guess when the miniseries V is my high water mark of alien movies (including in the important area of historical allegory) other movies will have to excel a little more to capture my fancy. I guess this means I was disappointed by this movie. Maybe because the movie is simply depressing. Watching humans dominate and enslave other creatures, human or not, is not really my idea of a good time. (Cf. Schindler's list, which is "good," I guess, but is really kind of a horrible way to spend three hours). But this effort lacked in many other ways besides the negativity inherent in the story.

And that's that. Recommended? No, not really, especially if you're a fan of the genre. What is Meryl Streep doing next? (Answer: oh. Never mind).