Alien Species (1996)

Two cops are driving some convicts around when they stumble upon some people that are in need of a lift. Meanwhile, some other people are working in a room doing some kind of research using computers. It's not really handled very well and everything just kind of happens in this movie.

You know that there is going to be some kind of situation where the convicts get free but have to band together with the normal folk due to aliens. I mean, come on, look at the poster. When that kind of stuff happens, it doesn't matter how many men you've murdered in bars or how many girls you've raped and slaughtered! You band together with your fellow man and take those alien bastards down!

So they do. There is an attempt at some kind of "bunch of people who hate each other forced to work together" drama but it doesn't really work so instead you get a bunch of shrill jerks skulking about in caves acting annoyed at one another, being slowly chased by aliens.

Am I giving too much away if I tell you that one of the convicts has a heart of gold and was wrongfully convicted? Well, that's what he claims anyway. A jury of his peers disagreed and I am not one to question due process.

The special effects are awful. You have a bunch of computer generated spaceships zooming around. There are a lot of explosions but they are also fake. They just take a picture of a city and overlay explosion animations over it!

There is a lot of swearing but very little blood and no nudity. Don't these people know why we watch movies with titles like Alien Species?? This is no Alien Contamination, that's for sure. The aliens in this movie basically just punch people to death.

Like a lot of movies from this time period, you have a hero running around spouting one-liners. They get old quickly. It's one of those movies where they felt they had some awesome chemistry going between the characters and thought it would be realistic and funny if characters would just say sarcastic things during every conversation. The script is awful. And not in a funny way... the constant one-liners and sarcastic comments are annoying, to the point where it's hard to appreciate the movie for its terribleness.

This is also one of those movies where you have a nerdy scientist guy but they overplay his nerdiness and/or scientistness and it ends up being stupid. Leading to conversations like this:

Scientist: Our probability of survival decreases by the second!
Hero: Say it in English Doc!
Scientist: We're screwed!

They made fun of this in The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and it's unbelievable that scriptwriters continue to think that's hilarious stuff. Is there anyone on this planet who will hear that and think, "hahaha that's a good one. The hero didn't understand the big words and the scientist was like 'we're screwed!' hahaha"

The nerdy guy also has other powers. He can put an alien artifact on top of his laptop and then merely by slamming his hands into the keyboard he can figure out what the artifact does and how to use it. At least he doesn't upload a virus into the alien ship like that guy in Independence Day. He is also good at finding loaded rocket launchers on the sides of roads for the hero to use.

Finally, the pacing is poor. This movie seems to last forever and an inordinate amount of time is spent cave skulking. There are also too many scenes of the nerdy guy being a jerk to his hot female scientist partner. Upon reflection, I think I could sum up this movie by saying that an inordinate amount of time was spent on everything in this movie.