ALIEN: Resurrection 
(1999)
review by Head Cheeze

So many people hate this movie, and for the life of me, I can't see why. Well, actually I can see why, but maybe I'm just looking at it in a whole different way, and that's why I had so much friggin' fun with this flick!

Jean Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children) takes a comic book script by Buffy creator Joss Whedon and creates a bizarre, farcical self-parodizing version of the Aliens universe, that comes off as a Gilliam-esque space opera meets Fifth Element Euro Sci-Fi bastard spawn, and maybe that's why so many people revile this film.

It is 200 years since Ripley's demise, but military scientists intent on "domesticating" the Xenomorphs, have taken history's greatest Alien killing machine, and crossed her DNA with her adversaries, thus creating a Ripley Alien hybrid clone. Meanwhile, a group of space pirates deliver a cargo of sleeping humans for more experimentation to the military space station, and decide to camp out and scavenge for parts for their ship. One of the pirates, Analee Call (Ryder) displays an odd obsession for the Ripley clone, and soon we find out that she is actually a new model cyborg, sent by an underground revolutionary group, to kill Ripley's clone and sabotage the governments Xeno experiments. Of course things go wrong and a bunch of aliens escape and start chowing on people, but that's just pudding in the pie.

Alien: Resurrection is not a great Alien movie. As a matter of fact, had Ripley and the Xeno's been omitted from the film it would probably made for a much better flick! Of course, that isn't the case, and we are left with the conundrum of what criteria should be used in reviewing the movie. Is is a true Alien sequel? Is it a tonge and cheek parody? Is it both?

As a fan of the comic book series by Dark Horse, I think it's the latter. This film SCREAMS comic book from the get-go, and as such I think it suceeds wonderfully, and is infinitely more digestible than the awful Alien 3. While there are zero scares, a curious lack of suspense, and a general lack of all things that made the first two Aliens films such great horror flicks, Resurrection does have plenty of great eye candy, some huge laughs, and a distinct voice that Jeunet injects into this entry, making it, in my opinion, an unfairly maligned film.

Now as for the DVD, the quality of image and sound are stupendous, but where the hell are the extras? A three minute short featurette? What the hell is that? I can see the lack of a commentary because Jeunet's would be in French and subtitled commentaries, while cool with me, are not popular with manufacturers. In my opinion Fox rushed this one out of the gate to get it in with the Legacy box set, probably because they felt it wasn't going to do very well as a stand alone disc anyway, which is a shame.

Watch Resurrection with no expectations. Detach yourself from the entire Alien mythos if you must, but give it a chance to entertain you the way it was meant to, and I think you just may find that it actually ain't half-bad!