Evolution

December 10, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 103 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

When I ventured out to see “Evolution,” I carried some rather high expectations with me. The trailers for the movie gave me reason to think that this could actually be one of the rarest things you could ever find - an intelligent sci-fi comedy. David Duchovny was going to be the science-fiction and Orlando Jones was the comedy. Can’t miss, right?

Evolution

Well, we should be so lucky. To be fair,though, the first half of the movie was doing a pretty good job of living up to my expectations but, unfortunately, the second half of the movie took the rest of the evening off and sent in Dan Aykroyd to mop up. He saunters into the movie and starts splicing scenes in from Ghostbusters, sending waves of Deja Vu rolling across the entire crowd. Bad mojo!

The movie starts off (as so many sci-fi classics do) with a large meteor hitting our atmosphere and then crashing to the ground. The catch here is that the meteorite has some stowaways in the form of some quickly evolving microorganisms. As you might expect, they soon evolve into bugs and plants and other creepy creatures that start wreaking havoc in the desert southwest.

I was highly amused by this premise and was looking forward to seeing how they would manage to overcome this most unusual threat but, alas, instead of figuring out how to deal with the situation, the writers decided to take the easy way out and go for a big special- effects ending. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but in this season of summer blockbusters, it’s going to take a lot to impress me with special-effects and here the movie just doesn’t deliver.

Even still, there are still enough laughs in the first half of the movie to make it not a complete waste of time; especially at matinee prices.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones, PG-13, SciFi, Seann William Scott, Theatrical