Evolution
“Evolution”
USA, 2001. Directed by Ivan ‘Special Place in Hell’ Reitman. Screenplay by David Diamond.
I certainly wasn’t expecting much from this but I still managed to come away completely disappointed. I was hoping David Duchovny’s presence was some sort of imprimatur but he spends most of the film looking as embarrassed as I did. Actually, that’s not quite true: he sleepwalks through the whole thing and doesn’t convey much of anything.
Duchovny plays Fox Mulder pretending to be Ira Kane, a geology professor with (surprise!) a chequered past at a small-town college who must, with an uninspiring bunch of sidekicks, save the world from an alien organism that is rapidly evolving into various dangerous but completely uninteresting life forms. (Note to CG department: must hire designers.)
We can save ourselves a lot of trouble here by getting one thing straight: “Evolution” is “Ghostbusters.” And when I say “is” I don’t mean “resembles” – I mean is. The one thing you certainly can’t accuse Ivan Reitman of is evolution but, hey, when you’re on a good thing, stick to it. Not too long into the film I started expecting Dan Ackroyd to show up… and then he did. Reitman sure ain’t afraid of no ghosts.
Julianne Moore steals the show (such as it is) with the only vaguely funny gag (a running joke about her character’s clumsiness) but even this wears thin after the first couple of instances. Ultimately she looks as embarrassed as the rest of the cast and who can blame her. Whereas in “Ghostbusters” the finale’s set piece hinged on vanquishing the Pillsbury Doughboy, here it’s a giant alien anus depicted with a graphic force that only someone with too small an imagination and too large a CG budget could conjure. Kane and his partner Harry Block (the very unfunny Orlando Jones who tries awfully hard to be ‘black’ despite the fact that he is) climb a fire truck ladder to administer a giant enema which kills the alien. It’s a laff-a-minute world-savin’ yukfest, my man!
Only the merest hint of the supposed chemistry between Duchovny and Moore is allowed to escape Reitman’s suffocating grip, so when they inevitably hook up at the end of the movie it’s apparently out of sheer bewilderment and lack of anything else to do.
The most entertaining aspect of the movie is wondering how it ever got made in the first place. I was under the impression that 12-year-old boys were a much tougher audience.
Unfortunately I was sober when I saw “Evolution” but I doubt there’s a drug that could make it funny. Avoid this movie at all costs.
•••
Posted to Film • 2002.06.18 (Tue) • 15:57
Comments
Post a comment:
Send This Story to an Enemy
• • •
