Film

Evolution (2001)

Director: Ivan Reitman

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A meteor crashes in the Arizona desert and, to the consternation of local college professors Duchovny and Jones, begins to ooze. They've stumbled across the most exciting scientific discovery of the new millennium: alien plankton. That's only the beginning. These suckers evolve 800 million years in a few hours; by mid-week they're growing legs, lungs and appetites. By Sunday the professors realise their tenure is at stake, along with the rest of mankind's. On the face of it, the film is a sloppy, catch-all conflation of Independence Day and Ghostbusters. Fun, though. Director Reitman obviously doesn't hold with the stereotype of the earnest, dry, dedicated scientist: his heroes are cynical, immoral and only fractionally smarter than the petty bureaucrats and pompous military officers with whom they must contend. It would be stretching a point to call this 'satire' - Reitman's comedy is pitched squarely to the libertarian right. It's anti-establishment, anti-Other, and mind-bogglingly obsessed with anal sex. Whatever possessed Moore to demean herself as a sexy klutz government scientist, who falls flat on her face repeatedly, and Scott is also highly resistible in a part shoe-horned in for teen audiences; at least Duchovny is agreeably mild-mannered, allowing Jones to milk the black-sidekick role for many more laughs than it's worth. But of course the real eye candy comes in the CGI work.

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