Movie Review: Ghostbustsers (2016) (PG13 – 116 minutes)

The first Ghostbusters was released in 1984, written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis and was directed by Ivan Reitman.  The film is a comedy classic, bizarrely hilarious and entertaining, and also endlessly quotable, “Listen! Do you smell that?” and, “Back off, man. I’m a scientist.”  The story was that of three scientists and one civilian fighting a rising tide of ghosts in New York City as an ancient evil was preparing to reenter our realm. They thwart the evil and save the city.  The story itself is not all that impressive, but it is one of the very best examples of the execution elevating the material.  The cast was spectacular, and allowed friends Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis to play off one another through the whole thing. Throw in the deadpan normal-guy-ness of Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver, the off-the-wall zaniness of Annie Potts and Rick Moranis, and you’ve got a hit. It’s a movie that if I catch it while flipping channels, I will almost always stop and watch it.

It had a sequel in 1989, which was not quite as good, and then stories of the writers kicking around an idea for the third movie were floating around since.  With the passing of Ramis in 2014, it seemed to hit an impasse.  Then, the idea of a reboot started coming up – and Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy, announced he was doing the reboot with four female leads, and the collective internet lost its damn mind. People claimed it was a horrible idea to remake a classic and it would ‘ruin their childhoods’, people claimed women weren’t funny, people claimed it was sexist to be in favor of it, people claimed it was sexist to not be in favor of it, people claimed all sorts of nonsense.  As with all internet nonsense, the very best response to all this crap is to simply ignore it – see the movie – and form your own opinion.  Did I think Ghostbusters needed a reboot?  No – I did not, I loved the original. However, Paul Feig is fantastic, and once he announced his cast, I was on board – because they are four of the best comedians working today.  Please note – I did not say that they were four of the best female comedians working today.  In that same way I will tell you that Shonda Rhimes is not one of the best female showrunners working today.  She is one of the best showrunners working today. Period.  There’s no need for qualifiers. 

The movie itself begins with a tour at a ‘haunted’ mansion in New York. The tour guide mentions the lady of the house killed her servants and then was imprisoned in the basement until she died down there. A small device goes off, and she comes back and starts spooking everyone.  Meanwhile Erin Gilbert is working on pursuing tenure as a professor at Columbia, hoping no one finds out about a pro-ghost book she wrote some years back with co-ghost-scientist Abby Yates.  Abby has put the book up on Amazon, and desperate to get it removed, Erin goes to visit Abby, and meets her new ghost-scientist co-worker at the suspicious Higgins Institute, Jillian Holtzmann.

While there, they get word about the haunting at the mansion, so the three of them head out to the mansion and witness the ghost resulting in Erin getting slimed – because someone has to.  They upload the video to the internet – resulting in all of them getting fired, and taking up residence in a ‘lab’ above a Chinese food restaurant.

A second ghost is spotted in the subway, leading the three to meet MTA officer Patty Tolan.  They spot the same strange device from the first haunting. After encountering this ghost, Patty joins them, Holtzmann creates a bunch of devices for them to use in the busting of ghosts. Every time there’s a moment of downtime, she’s suddenly got more tech for them, but you never really see her assembling them, they just keep showing up – I really enjoyed that running gag. 

The ladies gain some notoriety, resulting in the need to hire the world’s worst receptionist, Kevin. The mayor’s office wants them to keep it quiet, but they keep helping citizens, and eventually track down the why behind the hauntings. They work together to save the city while hijinks ensue.

The movie is funny, it’s not nearly as hilarious as I wanted, but it is funny.  There are many, many callbacks to the original, and yes, every surviving member of the original core cast (with the exception of Rick Moranis – who retired years ago) does have a cameo, and they were all enjoyable. Honestly, I could have done with a few less callbacks.  The four ladies are hilarious, and honestly were the best in the scenes where they were just sitting around talking with one another.

• Kristen Wiig plays Erin Gilbert, and I actually enjoy her more when she’s cut loose – here, she’s playing the “straight-man”, but it does work. She goes from frustrated to determined to prove that they are telling the truth, and are legitimate scientists. She is also really borderline creepy around Kevin, which goes from funny to awkward, but then cycles back around to funny again.

• Melissa McCarthy plays Abby Yates, and she doesn’t get to be as crazy as I would like, but she is super fun. She’s confident, and knows they are doing the right thing by pursuing the busting of ghosts. Her ongoing debate with Bennie the delivery guy about how many wontons are in her soup is a tiny bit of brilliance.

• Kate McKinnon plays Jillian Holtzmann, and honestly, she’s hilarious. Holtzmann is completely nuts, and is all about putting together the gear, making crazier and crazier items for them to use. 

• The amazing Leslie Jones plays basically Leslie Jones as Patty Tolan, an MTA worker who knows almost everything about the layout of the city and becomes invaluable to the team, and also provides the hearse that will become Ecto 1. 

• Zach Woods plays the tour guide and Ed Begley Jr. plays Ed Mulgrave, the caretaker of the mansion who is desperate for help in getting the ghost out of the mansion.

• Steve Higgins cameos as the dean of the suspicious institute where Abby and Holtzmann are working, he finds several creative ways to flip Abby off as he is firing her, and honestly, I laughed really hard at that.
• Neil Casey plays hotel lobby boy or bellhop Rowan North.  He’s creepy, weird, and a scary genius with evil plans….

• Chris Hemsworth plays up his Thor-like good looks as the bumbling Kevin. He’s so dumb that he covers his eyes when things are too loud.  That sounds really stupid, but Hemsworth somehow manages to pull it off. 

• Michael McDonald plays the theater manager where the Ghostbusters have to come catch a large demony ghost.  Why was that one shaped like a traditional demon? They were all shapes and sizes in the original too, so I guess it makes sense.  It did perch on Tolan’s shoulders, which was really funny.

• Michael K. Williams and Matt Walsh play Agent Hawkins and Rorke, two officers working for the mayor’s office who are trying to keep the whole ‘ghost’ situation under control.  They are surprisingly entertaining for the little amount of screen time they have.
• Andy Garcia (that’s right, Andy Garcia) plays Mayor Bradley, who is slightly similar to the mayor from the original movie, but a little more informed.
• Cecily Strong plays Jennifer Lynch, who I would describe as the mayor’s handler. She’s the one who lets the Ghostbusters know that the mayor is aware of the situation, but trying to keep it quiet so as not to panic the public.

Overall, I really enjoyed it.  I did want it to be a little funnier, and actually a little more frightening.  I will say that I saw it in 3D, and some of the effects pop through the top and bottom of the letterbox black bars, causing a really interesting effect – and yes, I did jump at the first ‘sliming’, because with the 3D, that stuff was coming right at me.

I also felt that the villain has a plan, but that plan wasn’t executed as well as it could have been. It was really interesting, but then gets a little dropped off in favor of silliness.  The original played as a horror-comedy, there were scenes that were legitimately scary.  This one, and maybe because everything is CGI (there are really no practical effects), feels more cartoony than scary, and in that way – this one felt more like a kids or tween movie whereas the original feels like an adult comedy. I would have liked this one to be a little more adult. Somewhere I’m sure there’s an R cut of this, with all the ladies’ improv left in, and I would really love to see that version.  But, yes, it is funny and no – it won’t ruin your childhood.

8 out of 10 – Gained points for the four funny leads. Gained points for Thor being surprisingly funny.  Lost points for too much cartoony CGI. Don’t go in with any expectations if you can help it!

Bonus - Leslie was on with Seth Myers to do some cooking...

Movie Review: The Legend of Tarzan (PG13 – 110 minutes)

Heads up – here’s a small history lesson you weren’t expecting - Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875 – 1950) was an American novelist who created Tarzan and John Carter.  He published Tarzan of the Apes in 1912.  

The story tells the tale of John Clayton, son of John and Alice Clayton, lord and lady of Greystoke back in England. They get marooned in Africa, and both perish, accidentally leaving their son to be raised by apes.  There have been many movies and TV shows based on the books, my favorite of course being the Travis Fimmel CW Tarzan show.

This movie, The Legend of Tarzan, was a surprise to me. I liked it much more than I was expecting to.  I’ve never really been a huge fan of Tarzan stories – based mainly on the time Burroughs wrote the original – it seemed that in order to make Africa understandable, he thought the continent needed a white hero.  Before I talk about the movie – let me bore you with some actual history, which the movie does a really good job of incorporating. 

The Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is located in Central sub-Saharan Africa, and was known as Zaire until 1997.  Because it is on the equator – it has heavy rainfall and the highest frequency of thunderstorms in the world. The annual rainfall can be 80 inches in some places and that sustains the Congo Rainforest – the second largest rain forest in the world leading to incredible bio-diversity, including many rare species found nowhere else: chimpanzees, bonobos, the African Forest Elephant, the mountain gorilla, white rhinos, and the amazing okapi. 

Back in 1885, which was the height of the African Colonialism movement (essentially, that’s when Europeans started to realize how rich in natural resources Africa was, and decided that they needed to break it up and rule it, because surely the ‘savages’ that had been living there forever had no idea how to use them – yikes), King Leopold II of Belgium conned the Berlin Conference to authorize his claim to the Congo Free State, to “improve the lives of the native inhabitants.” However, he ignored that statement and ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique (who were known for cutting off limbs of people they were ‘overseeing’ and enslaving natives).  He extracted a fortune from the Congo – through collection of ivory and rubber.  However, the world eventually learned of the human rights abuses committed and the fact that he was committing genocide, nearly ten million people died. The Belgian government finally took control of the Congo from him.  How did the world become aware of what Leopold was actually up to?

George Washington Williams, an African American historian, journalist, and lawyer played a major part in telling the world what Leopold was doing. He was born October 16^th, 1849 in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, which had abolished slavery after the American Revolution. He enlisted in the Union Army at 14 and fought during the final battles of the Civil War. He went to Mexico and joined the Republican army of General Espinosa fighting to overthrow Emperor Maximillian, where he became a lieutenant, learned some Spanish, and got a reputation as a good gunner.  He continued a 5 year service in the army fighting in the ‘Indian Territory’, and was wounded in 1868.  Afterwards, he went to Howard University in Washington D.C. for a short time, then began studies at the Newton Theological Institution near Boston, becoming the first African American to graduate from Newton in 1874.  He later moved to Cincinnati and studied law under Alphonso Taft, who was the father of William Howard Taft, and became the first African American elected to the Ohio State Legislature in 1880, and wrote many books on the history of African Americans. 

In 1880, he was granted an informal audience with King Leopold II of Belgium, who was still saying he was running the Congo ‘for the good of its people’.  In spite of the monarch’s objections, Williams went to Central Africa to see the conditions for himself. He then wrote an Open Letter to King Leopold on July 18^th, 1890.  In the letter, he condemned the brutal and inhuman treatment of the Congolese at the hands of Europeans and Africans supervising them, Leopold and his associates in particular. Williams wrote letters appealing to the international community of the day to “call and create an International Commission to investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity.”  While traveling back from Africa, Williams fell prey to tuberculosis and died August 1^st, 1891 in Blackpool, England.  However, he helped open the eyes of the world, and in 1908, the Belgian parliament bowed to international pressure (especially from the UK) and removed King Leopold from power of the Congo.

Now, that’s a lot of information – why share it here?  Because knowing that backstory made this movie more interesting for me.

This movie starts with the marooning of Lord and Lady Greystoke – John and Alice Clayton – in the Congo with their infant son. They do what they can to survive, but both soon die. The child is taken in by a family of Apes – and is raised by Kala, who he comes to think of as his mother and Akut, his brother. Given the name Tarzan, he is raised by them, becoming a part of the jungle.  Time jumping, we see the Leon Rom, emissary from the swiftly bankrupting King Leopold, searching for the diamonds of Opar. He encounters the chief of the local tribe, Mbonga, who promises him diamonds in return for Tarzan (this is because Tarzan killed his son years ago, but only because the son killed Kala).

The movie then shifts back to England – Tarzan has married Jane Porter after meeting her in Africa, and taken over the running of the Greystoke estate. We see him having a meeting with the British Prime Minister, who lets John know he’s just been personally invited by King Leopold to come visit the Congo. John at first refuses, but American envoy George Washington Williams urges John to go, because he suspects wrongdoing by the Belgians, and needs guidance in the Congo to get proof.  John agrees – and since Jane refuses to be left at home, so goes with them.

 While staying with the tribe Jane was raised with, Rom’s forces come into the village, taking many of the villagers along with John and Jane, but Williams manages to save John.  John, Williams, and several of the villagers track the group and intercept a Belgian military train carrying captured slaves – while freeing them, they learn that Rom intends to use the diamonds he gets from trading Tarzan to pay for a massive army to enter the Congo – decimate the native people, and take all the wealth.  The movie then shifts to a race to stop Rom from getting the diamonds to pay the military, and involves a daring escape by Jane and her friend Wasimbu, John and Williams running into John’s former gorilla family, and John finally having his confrontation with Mbonga. Oh – and John talking to crocodiles…

Spoiler Alert - it all ends pretty well - Williams heads back to England to present his evidence against Leopold, and Jane and John stay in Africa with their friends.

Directed by David Yates, who did the last 4 Harry Potter movies as well as the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie, Legend of Tarzan looks amazing. The B-Roll and wide scenery shots were all done in Gabon National Parks, but all the main character pieces were shot in England on soundstages. It’s impressive, because for the most part, it looks like Africa. All the animals are CGI, which is good, because there’s a lot of interaction with some big time endangered animals, so we’re better off using CGI animals. Especially because that allows you to really give them some serious non-verbal acting in the eyes, and I’m not going to lie, Kala’s death moved me to tears. The actors all seem pretty committed, and seem to be perfectly cast.

• Alexander Skarsgard plays Tarzan/John Clayton and initially took the role because his father Stellan Skarsgard is a huge Tarzan fan.  You can read all about the insane diet to get that Tarzan physique, and yes, he does look great. I was never a huge fan of his on True Blood – but he does make a great Tarzan. I did want him to spend more time running on all fours, since they mention that in the beginning, and I wanted him to be in the loincloth, but hey – he’s been in England for a while, and the short pants make sense. He’s fantastic in the non-verbal acting as well, really moving, and yes – he does seem to be able to talk to all the animals.

• Christoph Waltz plays Leon Rom, continuing his run of horrible characters that pretend to be nice guys. He’s basically cornered the market on that.  This character is based on the real man Leon Auguste Theophile Rom, a Belgian soldier in the Congo during the late 19^th century, who apparently used severed heads of Congolese people to decorate his flower beds.

• Samuel L. Jackson plays George Washington Williams, and is awesome.  Whether or not he’s exactly like the real Williams doesn’t matter, he’s basically Sam Jackson being awesome while helping Tarzan and busting a corrupt Belgian.

• Margot Robbie plays Jane Porter-Clayton, and was surprisingly not annoying. She did a good job of portraying Jane’s desire to go back to Africa, and support her husband no matter what he was getting into. I also enjoyed that she wanted to be more than a ‘damsel in distress’.

• Sidney Ralitsoele plays Wasimbu, Jane’s friend who escapes with her and helps to rally the troops. He seems to be an up and coming British actor, but this is his first big project. I hope we get more of him, because his calm and slightly arrogant presence is stunning and will take him to some really interesting projects.

• Djaimon Honsou plays Mbonga – the vengeful chief who wants Tarzan dead.  He’s got some awesome cheetah-style headwear and claws, but is a little blinded by anger until he and Tarzan talk it out. I would have liked to see his character show up at the end to help eliminate Rom’s forces.

• Jim Broadbent plays the British prime minister – and it’s almost a cameo for him as he shows up at the beginning to be confused and British to send Tarzan back to the jungle, and again at the end to be upset and British while reviewing Williams’s evidence.

• Casper Crump, who is Danish and currently Vandal Savage on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, plays Major Kerckhover, who basically seems to be playing Vandal Savage here – just Rom’s number one henchman – super evil.

Overall, the movie was a surprise for me – I was really expecting to not like it, but I really did enjoy it. The story wasn’t all that original, but I really enjoyed how some real historical events were included.  I wasn’t sure we needed another Tarzan movie (still not sure), but this one was pretty good.

8 out of 10 – surprisingly high because I was expecting nothing. Gained points for Sam Jackson playing George Washington Williams. Lost points for Waltz being so evil again.

Cast Interviews: 

Bonus- That one time Raiden was Tarzan - a bit from the Christopher Lambert version: Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes – from 1984.

Movie Review: Independence Day Resurgence (PG13 – 120 Minutes)

Spoiler Alert - we win.  

It’s been 20 years since the original Independence Day.  It was released Fourth of July weekend in 1996, and became a huge summer hit.  It told the story of a random group of people brought together during an alien attack.  Simple enough – but insanely watchable due to the amazing effects and great cast who were just charming enough to really make the audience care about the characters and get wrapped up into the story. 

This movie picks up 20 years later.  Similarly to the first movie, the beginning is loosely connected stories to introduce the characters as they prepare for a huge celebration to commemorate the victory 20 years ago. Dissimilarly to the first movie – there are way too many characters here, and several of them are unnecessary.

Humanity is almost completely united, a bit overconfident, and has spent the last 20 years readying for the aliens to return.  Area 51 has become a huge base with an alien prison. After all, when all their ships crashed in 96 after we destroyed the mothership, we had to put the prisoners somewhere. From what I could tell, they’ve basically been comatose for the last 20 years.  The President is prepping her speech.  Pilot Jake Morrison is working on installing a huge cannon on the moon that will help defend us, should the enemy return.  Jake is important to the story because he’s engaged to Patricia Whitmore, daughter of former president Whitmore (who seems to be going a little crazy) and now aide to current President Lanford. Dylan Hiller (son of Capt. Steven Hiller – the hero of the first movie), is leading the ‘legacy’ squadron of fighter pilots and they are preparing to head up to the moon base to fly the flags of the united countries for the ceremony.  Choppily added in to this is a backstory that involves Hiller being angry at Morrison for almost getting him killed during a training mission – something Hiller is particularly sensitive about, as it is stated that his father was killed on a test flight training mission. 

On top of that, David Levinson (the other hero from 96) is traveling to Africa to meet the warlord who has been leading his people in a ground battle with the aliens for the last 20 years, since one of their ships actually landed there prior to the mothership being destroyed years ago.  Floyd Rosenberg (no idea what his job is – some sort of federal paper pusher?) and Catherine Marceaux (psychologist) are there as well, and Dikembe Umbutu – the warlord, tells them they’ve been able to win the ground battle by realizing you have to kill the aliens from behind – as the foot soldiers are still in their larger, tentacled bio-mechanical exo-suits.  Levinson and crew head inside the ship and realize it sent out a distress signal.  At the same time – the prisoners suddenly wake up and start screaming.

Just as you’re still trying to wrap your head around all the character development from the beginning (wait, who was that one guy? Why are we paying attention to him?), the moon base gets contact from something coming towards it.  Paranoid, and not listening to Levinson – they shoot it down, even though Whitmore and Levinson state it was not from the same species they are at war with.  Morrison uses his ship to pick up an item that was in the ship, and then go pick up Levinson.  As a huge ship shows up – large enough to have its own gravity.  It is zooming past Saturn, totally messing up its rings. It has a big time shield, so it destroys all the weapons we had in place both on the moon and around the earth.  During this rampant destruction – all kinds of obvious landmarks are destroyed, people get wiped out – and the president and other big-time execs are all wiped out – so suddenly General Adams (who seems to be in control at Area 51) becomes president. Hiller and his squad head down to earth. The ship – about the size of a continent – settles over the earth, and starts to drill, because of course – they want our core to power their ships.

Everyone reconvenes at Area 51 and attempts to come up with a plan while Dr. Okun (who has been in a coma since the alien used him as a communication method in the first movie) wakes up and starts to go a little crazy.  None of the plans are particularly good, but basically they figure out that they won the first time when they destroyed the mothership, they killed the ‘Harvester Queen’.  Since these aliens are more insect-like, they figure that there is a queen in the mining ship clinging to earth, and if they can kill her – they can wipe out all the other aliens.  Great plan, but the queen realizes that the thing they got from the first ship that approached the moon is a sphere from another race, and she’s all about getting to that, so she comes after them.

Okun gets the sphere loose, and Floyd accidentally opens it – and it starts telling everyone how it is a species that has evolved to really only be computers – and its running a ‘refugee planet’ for other species that have been displaced by these ‘harvesters’ wiping out their planets. The sphere is convinced it’s too late, once the queen gets a hold of it – all hope is lost. To prevent that, Morrison, Hiller and squad fly into her ship to try to destroy her, but of course; that was a trap – so they crash and have to steal some alien ships to fly out.  Levinson and Okun and all decide to replicate the signal the sphere makes and lure the queen out onto the salt flats so they can take her out.  A good enough plan, but the queen is surrounding herself with a swirling vortex of her ships – including Hiller and Morrison.  Eventually, they get her – rescuing the sphere, and cause all the other ships to crash.   Oh – and rescue David’s father Julius as he’s driving a school bus full of kids (worst forced storyline ever). The sphere then decides humans are pretty great after all and asks them to come help train all the other refugees so that they can wipe the Harvesters out of the galaxy.  Get ready for the next movie.

Like the first one, this is directed by master-of-disaster Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Universal Soldier, Godzilla, 2012, Day After Tomorrow), and produced by Dean Devlin.  It’s not nearly as strong as the first one, the setup is more choppy – and the new characters are not nearly as charming as the previous round.  It’s got potential – and it feels like it just comes up short of what I wanted, but does deliver here and there. 

The movie looks great, but honestly, the worldwide CGI disaster has gotten so old at this point that my brain just checks out at those scenes “Oh, London is getting destroyed again”.  In the first movie, it was still new – now, we’ve seen it in almost every summer movie since then. When the destruction is so large scale and so animated, you really write it off, and don’t become invested.  It is clearly an attempt to top the first movie, but in doing that – it just ends up distancing the audience, whereas in the first movie, it pulled the audience in.  Honestly, I could have done with tighter action and less worldwide destruction. The story in the first movie also was strong and brought the audience in – here, it’s so overwhelming that it doesn’t really have the same intimacy the first one did.  The strongest part of the movie is once again the cast.  I personally missed Will Smith a whole bunch, I think the movie desperately needed his charisma – but hey, he was finishing up Concussion and starting Suicide Squad, so it didn’t really fit his schedule.  Did he make the right call? That remains to be seen (no, no he did not).  That charisma is lacking here, several of the new characters feel under-committed and tepid. What the original had going for it was that most of the actors were over-the-top enough to match the story/onscreen destruction.

• Liam Hemsworth plays Jake Morrison – he’s a pilot who is on some sort of punishment detail on the moon after his theatrics in trying to get the lead position for the legacy squadron, during which he almost killed Dylan.  We know the aliens killed his parents the first time around, and we know that he’s Patricia Whitmore’s fiancé. But aside from that, he’s flat and uninteresting.

• Jessie T. Usher plays Dylan Hiller – now, why they didn’t use Ross Bagley who played Dylan in the first movie and is still acting, is a little beyond me, but hey – whatever.  Usher is a little more charismatic, but really has nothing to work with in terms of story aside from a hatred of Morrison.  He doesn’t seem to have any issues with attempting to live up to his father’s legend, which could have been interesting. 

• Maika Monroe plays Patricia Whitmore – again, why didn’t they use Mae Whitman who played her in the first movie? She used to be a fighter pilot like her father, and flew in the legacy squadron, but she’s working for the current president now, trying to convince Morrison to be good while waiting out his stint on the moon. She actually was interesting – apparently she gave up flying to help take care of her father, who is slightly insane after having the aliens poke around in his head. Honestly, if Hemsworth’s character wasn’t in the movie, and she was given a slightly larger role – I think the movie would have been stronger.

• Angelababy plays Rain Lao – a member of the legacy squadron whose uncle runs the moon base. Again – nothing really given to her in terms of story or character, and just having Morrison’s partner lust after her doesn’t count.

• Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Catherine Marceaux; a French psychologist who beats Levinson to Africa to continue to study the effects on the minds of those who have been in close contact with the aliens, who communicate mostly by telepathy. It tends to really mess up humans, and then they have lingering after effects and telepathic headaches when more aliens show up.  They are also all drawing the same symbol, so she’s all about finding out what that means. The backstory of a previous romantic encounter with Levinson was useless and unnecessary.

• Sela Ward plays President Lanford, and she’s all tough all the time and decides to shoot at the sphere despite warnings from several people that it was not from the same race and could be on our side.  She does pay for that decision – but not without a tough one-liner.

• William Fichtner plays General Adams, and he’s pretty great, just like he is in everything. I wish he had a little more to do here than just listen to everyone and make decisions. 

• British actor Deobia Oparei plays Dikembe Umbutu, and he really stole every scene he was in.  What would be a fascinating spin-off idea is to see the 20 years or so when he and his people were fighting that ground war against the aliens while they were mining in Africa.  He’s started to translate their language, he can sometimes hear them in his head, he knows how to kill them, he took over after his father did a poor job of leading…this dude has the best backstory, and is easily one of the most interesting characters played with just the right mix of seriousness and over-the-top-ness by Oparei.  I’m still upset he got killed on GOT, but hey – at least he’s got other stuff happening.

• Nicolas Wright plays Floyd Rosenberg, and he’s almost the opposite of Umbutu’s character – made all the more obvious since they are pretty much paired together for the movie.  His backstory is so uninteresting that I have legitimately forgotten what his job was and why he was with Levinson in Africa. He gets slightly more interesting as the movie goes on, but only because he continues to try to prove that he’s useful, and mostly fails.

Now to the returning cast…

• Judd Hirsch plays Julius Levinson, and while he was humorous in the first movie, and helped to ground and personalize David’s character, here, he feels completely useless.  He’s totally shoehorned into the plot – reading and selling his memoir at a senior home, then fishing on his boat when the mothership lands, then joining up with a bunch of kids whose parents are dead – resulting in him being in the school bus for the final fight.  He just wasn’t used well, and honestly could have been removed from the movie without losing anything.

• Vivica Fox basically cameos as her character from the first movie – Jasmine Hiller – who is now a doctor.  Which is great, since she was unnecessarily a stripper in the first movie. She’s there to worry about her son when he goes on training missions.

• Bill Pullman plays Former President Whitmore, and does a great job of being totally insane and worried for the front half of the movie. He’s convinced they are coming back, and does give a short speech in this one that is not nearly as good as the previous one, and then a big time beard-shaving triumphant moment as he gets ready to get back in a plane.

• Brent Spiner plays Dr. Brackish Okun, and again – lightens up the movie tremendously with his exuberance.  He’s been in a coma for the last 20 years, since the alien used him as a talking-device.  Suddenly, when the mother ship shows back up, he wakes up – and helps analyze and work with the sphere.

• Jeff Goldblum is the very best part of this movie and basically carries the majority of it.  He once again plays David Levinson, and is still the smartest dude around, and is working on understanding the aliens to be better prepared for their inevitable return.  Connie is nowhere to be found in this movie, despite them finishing the last movie together, and instead it is implied he had a previous relationship with Catherine.

Overall, I’m honestly not sure what I thought about it. I simultaneously loved it and hated it.  There are parts that are great (most of them Jeff Goldblum), and parts that are terrible.  I was happy that there was some inclusion of hand to hand ground combat with the aliens, in the first movie – it was mostly aerial dogfights. The story wasn’t bad, and I’m interested to see what the sphere has in store for the future.  It could have been tightened up, cut out some of the useless parts and characters (Hemsworth, Hirsch, Fox, Wright and Gainsbourg could have all been removed) and strengthened some of the action – and actually made the action tighter, and I would have loved it.  Also –Will Smith – it really needed Will Smith.

6 out of 10 – not terrible, but not great.  We’ll see what comes next. I did like the alien queen, she was pretty nifty – but again, would have been even more impressive if she had not been ruined for me by the trailers. Get it together, Hollywood marketing people.

Bonus – 1997's Starship Troopers bugs – because if you’re going to battle alien bugs…have them be big time practical effects.