Mom, Aliens and Apple Pie: ID4 Revives Proud Tradition

Full of big-hearted, crowd-pleasing excitement, the solid, well-crafted "Independence Day" has barrelled onto the summer movie scene. The movie's real-life cast and gleeful, what-if approach toward alien invasions work wonderfully, in pleasant contrast with the string of choreographed stunts and signature one-liners that pass for action movies these days.

Already besieged with criticism for his weak stands on issues, Hollywood's latest version of the President (Bill Pullman) suddenly finds his country and the world threatened by the mysterious appearance of enormous spacecraft across the globe. Thereafter follows a plausible --hey, it's the movies-- sequence of fateful decisions and non-decisions, as the apocalypse draws near.

Meanwhile, a mind-body duo of scientist (Jeff Goldblum) and fighter pilot (Will Smith) are placed on their respective traintracks of plot-line-toward-hero-ism. Rounding out the cast are stirring love interests ranging from noble stripper (Vivica Fox) to First Lady (Mary McDonnell) and a motley crew of often comic characters, including Star Trek's Bret Spiner ("Data") as a scientist in a secret lab.

Despite the pyrotechnics, the characters emerge fairly intact, avoiding that corrugated card-board feel. The President, as played by Pullman inspiringly develops from Mr. Smith into J.F.K. Will Smith, as Captain Hitler, brings out the comic potential of fighter-pilot bravado when confronted by a threat so ludicrously daunting as a space invasion. And, exercising the techno-babble he learned in "Jurassic Park," Jeff Goldblum staves off the humorous bickering of his worrying father (Judd Hirsch) to save the world with the scientist's explain-it-all manner.

The film's well-executed special effects and adventure sequences show that there is nothing wrong with borrowing from other movies so long as it's done well. Viewers will have flashbacks to a wide array of adventure, sci-fi, and apocalyptic classics: "Star Wars," "Top Gun," "Alien," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and TV movie landmarks like "V," and "The Day After." Even the acronym-based ad campaign reminds one of "Terminator 2: Judgement Day."

Yet the combination of all these techniques creates a thrilling ensemble effect all its own that allows one to experience science fiction with a sense of free, Indiana Jones-type adventure spirit. Aliens with bulky heads resembling AWACS spy planes, swooping air battles, visions of destruction on a Biblical scale -- you can see it all here. The movie therefore delivers excitement in the familiar visual vocabulary of past classics, but skillfully updated with a cheerful feel for the epic. Oh, and don't forget such hard-to-beat signature shots as the encroaching shadows and rolling atmospheric disturbances of the spacecraft, or the annihilation of a landmark or two....

Much of the film's fun comes from the collision of epic and everyday quirkiness, somewhat reminiscent of when Harrison Ford is momentarily thwarted in saving the United States from corruption by the "out-of-paper" beep from the printer: when the spacecraft have been hovering over the cities for a while, Los Angeleans are given the warning only Los Angeleans would need: not to fire their weapons into the air at the spaceships. When Captain Hiller finally faces off with one of the horrid space aliens, he does what anyone really, really mad would do: he slugs it.

Pop references, too, have their place, as veterans of Roswell and other alien myths will enjoy seeing. When the first signals come in, the college student on duty at SETI listens to "It's the End of the World as We Know It."

Director Emmerich gives the movie the solid, confident feel of a good adventure, using his locations to the full, idiosyncratic thrill-value of each. These lead to striking shots of a desert near a military base and several confused urban crowd scenes. In the beginning of other sequences, the screen bursts into white, as July 4th draws nigh. The story, written by director Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, has a handy way of faithfully returning to the bits of exposition and information dropped along the way. The drunken pilot (Randy Quaid) whom we see being teased early on for his supposed alien encounters eventually gets his just dues.

While the more cynical might consider the movie's comic-book enthusiasm somewhat corny, "Independence Day" nonetheless provides a welcome departure from the standard, snide action fare because of its cheerful attitude. And at least heroic speeches are better than the facetious emotion of Schwarzeneggar's thumping his chest in "Eraser" and declaring that the real "you" is "in heah." Here is one movie that, with "Forrest Gump" innocence, will not make you furious when its box office gross exceeds the GNP of one or two small nations.