Well Deserved Praise

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

What I like about this movie is that not only funny, but also the aliens that come from the meteorite had been in many forms since their arrival. They come in many forms to wildlife except being hostile species and wanting to invade our world. For the characters being goofballs, it reminds me Ghostbusters in how to deal with these invasive creatures like how science is able to defeat them, same with the characters in Ghostbusters in how they invent technologies to defeat the ghosts. That's what makes the film impressive.

I really don't think the producers were shooting for a whacky comedy...because all the one liners are more snarky than funny...well, I suppose snarky can be funny in its own way.What really does make the movie fun is the variety of weird space alien creatures. In other words, the CGI was perty darn good...it' actually what makes the movie watchable, rather than the lame attempts of the characters to be humorous...While I liked it for what it is, I could only give Evolution a 6 for trying, but succeeding in only one area...

Of films I've seen in the last however long, only Jupiter Ascending, among studio films, is as ineptly made. Every single joke fails. Every single moment fails - every feeling or response the film (presumably) intended to elicit from a viewer, it fails to elicit. None of the performances is any good, but you can't even blame them because there was just nothing at all to work with. These aren't even characters. The 'relationships' and pretty much every single thing that occurs in the film, is given such short shrift, is told so abruptly, that none of it can possibly pay off or work. We're in the middle of this thing and Julianne Moore's character (the whole character consists of a profession and an exaggerated clumsiness) starts talking deeply and familiarly to Duchovny's character, as if they've shared some great film flirtation and relationship prior to that, and we were seeing the latest episode in this great antagonistic flirtation - except no, they'd had like one scene together before then and had barely even talked. The whole movie's like that. And the jokes, or the humor - I mean just nothing works. You just have to guess where the humor was meant to be, so little is it actually there. Like, you have to try to figure what in a given scene or moment or interaction could have been meant to be funny. It's just terrible, scene for scene, shot for shot, moment for moment, joke for joke. A bad, bad movie. Also, there's one scene that I found especially hilarious (not on purpose). The guys have just killed the thing at the mall, and then there's just the most inexplicable little interlude I've ever seen in a movie - they cut to the trio in a jeep driving home, and they're all loudly singing "Play that funky music white boy" while doing like Night at the Roxbury head dancing. It's a complete non sequitur. It follows from nothing. Nothing follows from it. It isn't funny. It isn't interesting. Well, it's kind of interesting, as an object. But not interesting in the context of the story. So. Yea I just have no idea. I have no idea what this movie was even supposed to be. I regret having seen it but I'm proud I finished it.Oh I almost forgot - the Ghostbusters references. And honestly, in retrospect, maybe the entire movie was a Ghostbusters reference or an attempt to recapture that magic (this film DID succeed in recapturing the 'magic' of Ghostbusters 2, imo). OK, so Dan Aykroyd shows up as the governor and does his usual thing, and then - there's just a Ghostbusters scene. I mean Reitman basically just throws up a Ghostbusters scene, except with a much worse script and horrible characters in a horrible movie with horrible performers. The scene it's copying is the Ghostbusters scene where the EPA guy and the Ghostbusters are arguing in front of the mayor of NYC. In this film it's Ted Levine's general as the EPA guy, the good guys as the Ghostbusters, and Aykroyd as the mayor. It was weird. Just really weird. I dunno. If I've made this movie sound at all interesting or worth investigating, I apologize. It's not interesting. Don't see it. Watch something else.

Meteor strikes Wayne Grey (Seann William Scott)'s car. Glen Canyon Community College professors Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and Harry Block (Orlando Jones) investigate. Block is working for US Geological Survey. The meteor lands in an underground cavern and they find a blue liquid coming out of the rock. Kane discovers alien life growing exponentially and evolving exponentially. Soon the military moves in led by General Russell Woodman (Ted Levine) with Dr. Allison Reed (Julianne Moore) from the CDC.It's a cross between a disturbing grotesque horror and broad comedy. It's a bit unusual because comedies aren't normally that gross. I laughed hard as I squirm in my seat. There is something disturbing and hilarious about pulling an alien fly out of Orlando Jones' backside. I like that the guys are selfish oafs. I even like the forced pratfall from Julianne Moore. This being an Ivan Reitman film. There are going to be some Ghost Busters comparisons. The creature feature is a bit too scary to be as funny as GB. However I cannot minimize how big some of the laughs got.