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District 9

Day 20

Film 20

Hey look at that! I'm still on track for this whole thing. Sweet!

I walked into District 9 with a quizzical air. The huge marketing campaign and the small army of fan boys that appeared in its aftermath made me believe that this film was just too good to be true. I was not blown away by District 9. A good portion of it was the usual sci fi junk, filled with more explosions than character and using special effects to make us forget about its holes. District 9 did do some things to transcend its sci fi brothers. It tried its best to sell a deeper message than its Hollywood counterparts, and even if the message failed it should be respected for it.

District 9 builds a realistic world twenty years after first contact with a spaceship of alien refugees, the Prawns. These aliens serve as an allegory for other refugees and the first thirty or so minutes of the film do a spectacular job showing the squalor and crime built around desperate and unwanted people. The movie really shines in these scenes as the brutally true satire makes you squirm. It is kind of a shame Blomkamp did not decide to follow this theme the entire film, and as soon as our poor bureaucrat protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (Copley) is space gooed the movie starts to fall back into more mindless roots.

The rest of the film is filled with stereotype military goons, status quo alien research laboratories, and packed with action that would be boring had there not been some super cool alien weaponry to shake things up. It is not bad, but it all feels done before, which feels like a let down after District 9's amazing start. By about the 90 minute mark I was hoping for things to start cleaning themselves up.

My final verdict:

I was not blow away by District 9 but it is better than 90% of the crap out there. It is worth a viewing.