NIKKI says:I'd heard a lot about this movie's ups and downs on its way to release -- that the studio refused to show it to critics, that scenes were recut and re-edited, the Wachowskis were brought in to shoot some scenes. In my head, it was a MST3k-moment waiting to happen. It actually wasn't that bad. And any time I can say that about a movie starring Nicole Kidman, you best take my word for it.
Nicole was her usual sticky self. The woman is perfect for a movie like this -- my favourite part of the trailer is when someone tells Nicole to "try not to show emotion". She doesn't have to try very hard, you know? She is such a cold actress. I don't relate to her at all. I just think she's a woman who reads lines. She did that here, so it was hard to really get behind her character's fear. I also find myself wondering, whenever I watch her, just what her co-stars think of her weird lips and face.
I also thought the movie missed a bet by taking the famous Body Snatchers pods out. Why would they do that? Did they fear making a horror movie? Is this supposed to be a comment on drones in society? Well, the pods are important in this story. It's like remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street and giving Freddy a gun instead. Or something like that. They changed the pod-thing to a face-barfing thing, and it gave the film an unintentional slapstick quality.
To its credit, I was interested until the end (though I hated the ambiguous final scene). I thought it looked great. I found it chock-full of atmosphere. But, thinking about it, it's a movie that wants to be full of political allegory, but it doesn't hold up. Should we look at the zombifying of human as a good thing so we don't fight and go to war? Meh. Characters just talked about this, while war images played on TV. Boring. It wasn't terrible, it just wasn't anywhere near as smart as it needed to be.
2/5
