Evolution (Hindi) Review

The worst part of being a ghost, the bedsheet variety, is that there are absolutely no takers for that brand of horror. Gone are the days when you could scare the heebie jeebies out of your kid brother by powdering your face white, draping a sheet and shining a torch across your jaws-esque mouth. Nope, no such luck. The only things that might spook him a bit are those slimy, yucky, 'haven't had a shower since a gazillion years' looking aliens. It's the most '90s thing, the whole alien phenomenon.

Now alien movies can be categorized into 2 genres:

1. The ET who wanted to 'phone home' and generally was a cause for Noah's Ark to be rebuilt, for the flood that your tears caused, and
2. The ETs who spew green slime, reproduce like rabbits and look like something that happened to your cat after he ate those naphthalene balls. Ivan Reitman's aliens belong to the latter category.

And like we haven't had alien and alien movies for breakfast and lunch, now we have to contend with a dumb 67 course alien supper!

Evolution is one such movie that reeks of slimy green aliens. With ample special effects and toilet humor, it tells the story of a small Arizona town that is menaced by alien critters brought to earth in a meteor.

Two professors from the local community college, Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and Harry Block (Orlando Jones), take samples of the slime oozing from the meteor to find organisms which evolve faster than you can say arachnophobia. The pair attempts to conceal its discovery, but soon the aliens are evolving into all sorts of species and sub-species, and the army takes over the investigation.

This is where Duchovny's love interest, Julianne Moore, makes her post-Hannibal appearance as 'Scully's-stand-in'. She acts officious and always ingratiatingly clumsy. She seems to be working to better the record of Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality when it comes to tripping over her own two toes.

So basically you have the two science profs, one scientist and two other morons who form the ragtag team set out to save the world from the hyper evolving aliens. They eventually succeed, which is much more than what can be said for the movie.

The whole film sucks, and sucks big time. It attempts to bring elements of 'Ghostbusters' into the screenplay and flops miserably. I saw Ghostbusters when I was like 12. But now I am not 12, neither is half the population, which brings us to the question of why the film was made.

David Duchovny as the wry agent in X-Files is supercool. But then he can't continue with that sort of deadpan acting if he wants to have a cinema career successful in the least. He seems more dead here than deadpan. Orlando Jones as the funnyman is nauseating, but seems quite confident of delivering some funny stuff - now only if there was some stuff to deliver!

An actress of Julianne Moore's caliber acting in such a movie where she gets to deliver all of 3 ¾ lines makes you reach for the tissue box to hand it to her. As for the other moron - Sean William Scott (you would probably remember him as one of the two dimwits from Dude Where's My Car) - I had to clench my teeth while watching the flick.

The whole FX team seemed to have worked overtime to find new and slimy methods of presenting those daft aliens. I have a question here - just how can we assume that they are almost always yucky and slimy? Just how can we be so sure that they aren't better looking than us, all suave and smelling of Givenchy? Just a thought. Anyway, what was that computer generated Jurassic Park dino doing in that mall anyway? Who's the scriptwriter, I say? Let's round him up and bump him off.

I seriously wonder why movies like this are made. The most gruesome part was that there were people in the movie hall who were actually laughing at the jokes (?), and that really gets you scared. There are a few scary moments here and there in the movie, too. For example, that alien in the kitchen, who has the cutest, droopiest, almost about-to-cry-face that you have ever seen...but don't get too close!

Which is what I would say if you are around the theaters playing this movie. Me? I would rather have raw vegetables than ever watch such wretched stuff again in my harebrain-ideas infested life. Anyways, I would rather you wait for Star Movies or HBO to buy the rights of the movie. 26 bucks goes a looooooong way!