AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR

A film review by David N. Butterworth

Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth

** (out of ****)

There's a certain inalienable truth (no pun intended) that if you put the

Alien franchise and the Predator franchise together in the same room we, the

audience, have absolutely no chance of winning.

It's the classic juvenile debate. In a fight, who would win: 100 ninjas

or 100 WWF smackdown champions? In a fight, who would win: Freddy or Jason?

In a fight, who would win: two turtledoves or a partridge in a pear tree? Just

as long as the filmmakers leave room for a sequel it doesn't much matter (and

yes, "Alien Vs. Predator" leaves the door open--wide open--for "AVP2").

To date there have been four Alien movies and two Predator movies so right

there you have some sense of our mortal kombatants (sic.) respective popularity.

That staple of a "rag tag bunch of space derelicts" movies Lance Henriksen

("Aliens," "Alien3," "Alien 49 7/8") is featured as asthmatic "Money" magazine

cover model Charles Bishop Weyland of Weyland Industries. As the film opens,

he's assembling a crack team of drillers and riggers for a secret mission to

the wilds of Antarctica on the icebreaker Piper Perabo led by tough cookie cutter

Alexa Woods ("Out of Time"'s Sanaa Lathan) after Weyland's trans-global researchers

discover a huge pyramid buried some 2,000 feet beneath an abandoned whaling

station. The pyramid looks part Aztec, part Cambodian, and part Egyptian. The

question is, who built it and why? (Nobody, not even "Trainspotting"'s Ewen

Bremner, seems to notice those rather obvious Alien vs. Predator hieroglyphs

cut into the stone.)

Others, it would seem, are also interested in the pyramid. Predatory, outer

space others with dreadlocks, cloaking devices, and hand-operated Cuisinarts.

Directed by the chiefly Brit Paul W.S. Anderson (not to be confused with

"Punch-Drunk Love"'s P.T. Anderson) with the same kind of mechanized murk he

brought to the likes of "Event Horizon" and "Soldier" (with Kurt Russell), "Alien

Vs. Predator" is a superfluous if not entirely boring romp, littered with inanities

and inaccuracies and logic loopholes you could drive a Hummer 2 through (if,

indeed, people drove through holes). It's all rather grimy and silly and low-lit

and once the pyramid starts closing up every ten minutes, not unlike the Rubic's

cubist house in "Thir13en Ghosts," all hell (and reasoning) breaks loose even

further.

Sure "Alien Vs. Predator" is junk, but it's mindless junk, and I didn't

hate it nearly as much as I ought to have, thought I would, and/or everyone

else. I still find H.R. Giger's alien a rather fascinating creation and it's

all here in its gelatinous, gooey glory--facehuggers, chestbursters, and the

big momma queen herself (to which, it would seem to be a series requirement,

at least one person calls an ugly S.O.B.). The Predator doesn't do much for

me though: just a guy in an invisible suit. And when it teams up with a Ripley-esque

Woods in the final showdown, well... that's just plain ridiculous.

Face it. "Alien Vs. Predator" isn't a film, it's a marketing ploy, a promotional

abbreviation that reiterates the same exact thinking as when Universal first

paired Frankenstein with the Wolfman some 60 years ago. Kids love movie monsters--the

film is rated PG-13--so why not put their two favorites together in the one

film?

     My money's on the partridge, son.

--

David N. Butterworth

dnb@dca.net

Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf"

online at http://members.dca.net/dnb

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X-RT-ReviewID: 1321523
X-RT-TitleID: 1134655
X-RT-SourceID: 878
X-RT-AuthorID: 1393
X-RT-RatingText: 2/4