INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE (PG-13)

Released by 20th Century Fox
Reviewed by Adam Mast

There are dumb summer movies and then there is INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE. I’ll give it this though; While dumb, it isn’t as offensive or as insulting as something like TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. What’s particularly odd about this long-gestating follow-up though, is that it took twenty years for it to come to fruition. It’s doubtful that RESURGENCE will be as successful as it might have been had it come out two or three years after the first because quite frankly, the INDEPENDENCE DAY name is hardly what it once was.

In RESURGENCE, two decades have passed since aliens attacked our planet. We won that particular battle and through the years, Earth’s brightest scientists have managed to use alien technology recovered during that war to advance our own technology. Why? To protect the planet in the off chance that alien reinforcements should eventually arrive for a little payback. And guess what: “They’re back.”

The heart of this movie finds disgraced pilot Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) romancing ex-president Whitmore’s daughter, Patricia (Maika Monroe), and teaming with Dylan Hiller (Jessie T. Usher), the son of Steven and Jasmine (Will Smith and Vivica A. Fox), to fight a much larger alien collective. Also along for the ride is Jeff Goldblum‘s eccentric David Levinson, Judd Hirsch‘s obnoxious Julius Levinson, Sela Ward‘s fierce President Lanford, and Brent Spiner‘s nutty Dr. Brakish Okun (for those of you who thought he died, you were wrong.)

Also back are the goofy jokes and unlimited cheese whiz. I suppose there’s something to be said for an “end-of-the-world” movie that can manage to ditch the sort of grim nature at the center of most other “end-of-the-world” type movies. RESURGENCE trades in reality-based apocalyptic mayhem for a more light-hearted approach. It also blatantly borrows from countless other movies in the process. Not that there’s anything wrong with a spirited homage, but when your movie simply reminds viewers of infinitely better movies, that’s a problem. The fact is, ALIENS, WAR OF THE WORLDS, DISTRICT 9, STAR WARS, EDGE OF TOMORROW, and TOP GUN are much better movies and it should be noted that I’m not even a very big fan of TOP GUN.

Roland Emmerich directs the proceedings with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer but then no one going to see an INDEPENDENCE DAY movie is expecting subtlety so I can’t fault it for that one. It can be faulted for too many zany subplots and unnecessary characters, though. Will Smith is nowhere to be found (except by way of an oil painting in the White House) and while we can only speculate as for the true reason that the Fresh Prince opted to sit this one out, his Steven Hiller is referenced in the movie and it plays like a slap in the face.

Usher (filling in for a nowhere-to-be-found Ross Bagley), try as he might, hasn’t an iota of Smith’s personality, but this hasn’t so much to do with Usher as an actor as it has to do with the character as written. In fact, none of the characters in this picture get much of an opportunity to truly stand out. Goldblum has a couple of vintage Goldblumesque moments and Spiner is exceptionally weird, but newbies like the supremely talented Monroe (filling in for a nowhere-to-be-found Mae Whitman) and up and comer Hemsworth (brother of Thor) are given very little to do.

Let’s face it. RESURGENCE is about the alien-inspired carnage and as expected, Emmerich and his visual effects crew have worked overtime in the spectacle department. While some of the effects are quite good, they don’t add up to much in the grand scheme of things because I never really cared much about what was happening to these thinly drawn characters. The original movie doesn’t really hold up all that well, but it has a charm factor and a sense of real fun that this sequel is sorely lacking, and again, this film offers up very little in the way of character. Ex-President Whitman’s opening nightmare sequence suggests that perhaps a grizzled Bill Pullman will get the opportunity to have some fun, but alas, no dice.

INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE isn’t a total waste. It has a handful of off-the-wall bonkers moments and a few lines of inane dialogue that push the film into the “this-is-so-stupid-it’s-almost-good” category. In fact, this movie is so bonkers, I halfway expected Harvey Firestein and Randy Quaid to show up even though–SPOILER ALERT–Their characters died in the first picture. Further props for the shrewd and gleeful fashion in which this big Hollywood summer movie nonchalantly and quite courageously integrates a most surprising homosexual relationship into the proceedings without making a big deal about it. True, it’s sort of played for laughs but it’s a charming attribute in a film void of much charm. In the end, RESURGENCE emerges as the best INDEPENDENCE DAY movie since the first INDEPENDENCE DAY movie. Take that as you will.