(warning, this movie is so effin stupid that I am going to give away the entire plot here to save you from wasting away your life on 2 hours of idiotic dribble - please be forewarned)
There are soo many things wrong with District 9 its really not funny and although I wanted to walk away from this movie with admiration, all I could muster up was a cynical groan as the more I thought about this movie, the more offended I became.
The flick, if you can call it that, starts off in a rather odd mocumentary about Wikus Van De Merwe, which I was amused to find out is an African joke for idiot, and the actor who plays him doesn't disappoint in that department as we learn that he has been given a recent promotion as head of the relocation team for the Centiroaches (the movie refers to them as "Prawns" but I like Centiroaches better cause they look like a mix of centipedes and roaches). His advancement, is a bit of nepotism as we learn that his wife's father is head of MNU (Multi-National United - the private agency handed the relocation task). The centiroaches somehow became stranded above Johannesburg and the government thought it was a good idea to break into the hovering spaceship, coral all the centiroaches, and set up District 9 - a virtual shanti town as they make plans to relocate them to District 10 (due in theaters summer of 2010 - well that's my guess anyhow). Blah blah blah, the movie breezes through the human rights implications, the marketing campaign, the illegalities of the endeavor, and a slight pan of human opposition before we get to the point where Wikus is handing out eviction notices and gets sprayed by a substance he found in one of the shacks that begins to turn his world around.
Ohh, mind you, there are a lot of secrets in district 9, because they keep telling you that over and over again. But the secrets are standard sci-fi conventional fare. As we learn, which was super obvious before the movie even starts - MNU is one of the largest weapons manufacturers and they are dissecting the centiroaches because duh, that's what happens in all sci-fi movies. But boo effin hoo cause the weapons have been bioengineered to only work with the centiroaches DNA. So when Wikus enters the shack and gets sprayed by a substance in a device that one of the centiroaches is working on, for some reason it starts to turn him into a centiroach and a valuable commodity for MNU cause now they have a specimen that can operate the centiroaches weaponry. Okay lets stop here and evaluate.
I don't remember a single sci-fi movie ever taking place in Africa, but you can't help but to think this movie is trying to raise some sort of consciousness about the plight of tribes that have been relegated to shanti-towns and therefore alien to their own land by choosing Africa as a backdrop for an alien encounter. but that's not really the case, as the movie quickly veers off this course and instead treats the aliens as if they were the scum of the earth. Yes, the CGI is seamless, but its hard to feel any way about them when they are depicted in such a negative light. Depicting them this way, was to me, to say that we are somehow more advanced than them. Even though the facts remain that they arrived here in a super advanced technology spaceship and have invented biotechnology that we can't seem to figure out. Also, the centiroaches have a weird obsession with cat food that turns them and their plight into a complete joke. 2nd, in the wake of them being stranded here for 20 years or so, we can understand their click talk and they can understand english but neither speaks the others language. Its like how does that work. 3rd, Jimmy Effin Centiroach (I don't know what his name was in the film, but we will refer to him as this - he was the only humane character in the whole thing and he is a centiroach) is scourging the ground looking for "the fluid" amongst trash so that he can refill his duracell battery and power the hovering spaceship back home. But get this, this fluid he hid in the shack that Wikus finds is the same fluid that begins to turn him into a centiroach and therefore a hot commodity for MNU.
First of all, I couldn't figure out, in all of their dissecting of the aliens, why they didn't just make a glove out of one of the aliens hands and use the biotech weapons. So when Wikus begins his transformation, it only seemed like justification for the film to suddenly turn into "the Fugitive", which it does. This is also a major flaw, as the movie takes an issue that is grand in scope and reduces it to a single person driven drama that's not very interesting. In the "Fugitive" section of the movie, you get everything to calls to his dear wife (a relationship they don't establish in the story) about how much he loves her to a local warlord who, through the suggestions of a vodoo priestess, starts to hunt Wikus because he believes that eating Wikus's mutated arm will give him the power to use the biotech alien weapons. Also, when Wikus becomes the fugitive he runs to what the movie describes would be the last place anyone would find him, District 9, which is the first place I would look since his photo has been plastered all over society.
Look, there was so much nonsense going on in this film that I got a headache about half way through. Wikus and Jimmy the Effin Centiroach then form an unlikely friendship because Jimmy the Effin Centiroach promises to fix Wikus and turn him back into a human. Which was weird only because if you can turn Wikus back 100 percent human by taking him up to your spaceship does that suggest that you can turn a centiroach into a human. No, Jimmy the Effin Centiroach has to go back to his home planet first and it will take him three years to go there and come back to fix Wikus so Wikus slowly turns into a centiroach and then Jimmy and his little spawn of a son, find the durracell battery they filled earlier which, of all places, was back at MNU headquarters (Wikus was brought back there after he confiscated it and was sprayed with the fluid that begins to turn his arm into a centiroach) and hop back into the spaceship and head home. The story ends with Wikus in full centiroach who occasionally visits his wife, leaving her aluminum flowers he has made. Of course everyone thinks Wikus is dead for whatever dumb ass reason and she still believes he is alive. The very last shot is of Wikus in the district 9 trash dump forming an aluminum rose so you are good and the hell well clear that its him that left it at his wife's doorstep.
Sounds ridiculous.....well, its that and more. Seriously, the only thing this movie gets right is promising that the aliens will return in 3 years which is long enough for a sequel. I saw the short this movie is based on and that had more depth in it for its 5 minute running time or whatever it was versus this two hour shit fest. District 9 is actually 3 completely shitty movies rolled into one.....a social commentary/sci-fi drama - a chase movie - and a swooning "The Notebook" style love story that just made no sense whatsoever. The tone of the movie is also where it goes horribly wrong. Never do you really take anything seriously because its always filmed in a sort of hammy, tongue in cheek kind of way. I was offended because there are millions of people who are forced to live in similar conditions everyday. Who are uprooted and told to relocate for corporatist agendas and its not to be taken lightly. Their plight is one that hasn't really been investigate in a big summer film of this scope.....and I fear after the abysmal joke that is District 9, it never will receive its proper due.
So in the end all the centiroaches are moved to District 10 and there are about 2 million of these SOB that for whatever reason we feel the need to spend billions on to house. What would have been more interesting is if these centiroaches actually demanded some rights and the population had to figure out how to accommodate another 2 bezillion people who have to function on the planet. No, but that movie will never get made. Instead, filmmakers much rather make something to gawk at and eat popcorn to that doesn't engage your brain in any way shape or form. District 9, in essence, has to be the most contentious film I have seen in ages. For it not only insults your intelligence, but assumes you can't wipe your own ass either. A brilliant marketing campaign in desperate search for a good movie. Maybe one day, Hollywood will marry the two and embrace it rather than making it an outcast.
No comments:
Post a Comment