Yesterday Jan & I went to see Independence Day: Resurgence. We knew it was supposed to be a bad movie. Of the one hundred and twenty-five professional reviewers counted on Rotten Tomatoes only thirty-four percent liked it. And, indeed, it is a bad movie.
But, the flaw in the reviews could, to my mind, be found in Rotten Tomatoes’ “critics consensus.” “It’s undeniably visually impressive, but like its predecessor, Independence Day: Resurgence lacks enough emotional heft to support its end-of-the-world narrative stakes.” It’s in that panning of the first in what is possibly a trilogy, and could maybe depending on lots of things even make into a franchise that we see what some might be missing. It’s that lacking heft comment. Which seems to miss something going on with both films.
While I found the original 1996 astonishingly weak in many areas, weak plot, bad writing, and wooden acting, it was at the same time the highest grossing film of the year, and was even for a time the second highest grossing film of all time. The critically panned, and justly so, original was as far as box office goes a wild fire success.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not denying the original was a bad movie. And I’m certainly not arguing the sequel is a good movie. Heaven forfend. The first movie was, as several reviewers put it, “dumb fun.” And, those are the magic words. While not as good as the first in the dumb fun movie category, and certainly has too many leaden moments between the good stuff, which I find unfortunate, all that said to my mind Independence Day: Resurgence is enough of a good bad movie to recommend it for a summer evening.
You really have to be in the mood. The plot failures, okay, the question of whether there really was a plot at all after the “high concept” (which I figure was: sequel with more special effects) was cooked up, is a problem. And, the characters are introduced in ways that mostly don’t make you really care about what happens to them. As Brian Raftery tells us in his devastating review “Sorry, Gang. But Independence Day: Resurgence is Really Bad” tells us:
“Resurgence wastes way too much time getting to the Good Stuff, setting up a bunch of new characters who’ll you immediately wish would get obliterated, including President Something-Something (Sela Ward), DeadWillSmithsSon (Jessie T. Usher), and Skipper Dreampie (Liam Hemsworth). None of them register, especially Hemsworth, whose big introductory scene finds him looking sleepy-eyed and wearing a sideways ballcap and undershirt; he looks like a sad, aspiring Australian rapper who’s just found out his Coachella tickets were counterfeit.”
The problem as I see it with the reviews is that they seem for the most part want a good movie and are disappointed. Even Mr Raftery seems to feel it was supposed to be a better movie than it was, even as he exults in the good badness of the original. Yes, the sequel isn’t as good bad as the first film. (Actually he hypothesizes another film alluding to a throw away line about a ten year fight in Africa that I agree would have been a much better movie) But, is it a good enough pop corn stuffer to justify laying out the fifteen bucks it is going to cost? Again, if the moment is right, you bet.
There are good moments in sufficient abundance to go for it. I would particularly lift the hat to Brent Spinner’s reprise roll, which in this movie gives him a meatier part than in the original. And who doesn’t enjoy Judd Hirsch as he settles comfortably into his grumpy old fart with a heart of gold role, or, Jeff Goldblum becoming ever more of the same character he does so well in film after film?
Bottom line? As Jan opined as we walked out of the theater, Resurgence is “corny and cheesy.” And, as she added in a comment on Facebook, “and I loved it!” I agree. Right moment. For us, yes. I’d just returned from a week away at a conference, and it was our dinner and a movie night on a warm Southern California evening. She went on in her comments, “Also loved the egalitarian earth culture – we can only dream. Classic bad aliens, which means they have insectoid/crustacean physiology, with tentacles and mucus. Good aliens are designed by Steve Jobs.” Oh, and lots of things get blown up. With special attention to landmarks.
In short. A good bad movie. A little more bad than the original. Still fun.
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