Battle of the Worlds

(Note: I'm just moving this one here to The Blog because I can't find a DVD copy of it, and frankly I don't really care to dig that deep.)

This movie is really boring. That kinda sucks since it's about a cranky scientist and a planet that moves on its own whose inhabitants are dead aliens. But sadly, any excitement is killed off by endless scenes of astronauts in space ships looking like they have to take a crap and said cranky scientist trying to talk to a bunch of disembodied heads, pleading they heed his words. I guess you want to hear about it a little bit more in depth. Ok, fine.

We start off with Fred half naked and swimming in a lake/ocean/pond/ some source of water. I should point out that we never find out where this lake/source of water is, or where most of these characters hang out are at. I'm going to go on a limb, though, and say it's probably Italy, only because everyone is dubbed, and most of the credits feature Italian people. Anyway, Fred is swimming half naked when Eve runs up shouting forhim. Fred pulls her in and we get a sweet shot of Eve all wet while wearing white. I guess she wins the Wet T-shirt contest by default.

Anyway, Eve tells her this guy named George wants to see him about something. So he dries up and pays a visit. George tells Fred some boring science-y stuff about airwaves and gravity and stuff (I tried to pay attention, but frankly talk like this bores me) and George freaks out about something. George runs out of the room where a chick, who I think is suppose to be a secretary, asks, "Why is Fishface so worked up?" This is gonna be the best line in the whole movie and it's only 5 minutes in.

Fishface runs to Dr. Cornfield and shows him whatever it is he found out. What he found out is that some giant ass thing is heading toward Earth, but it's moving kinda slow so there's not much of a danger of impact, but it's all possible. Fred states he knew about it for some time but it didn't bother him. As punishment for not telling everyone and putting everyone's lives in danger, he becomes head of FEMA. Er, I mean, he must go visit "the old man".

The Old Man turns out to be Benson (Not THAT Benson), who lives in his greenhouse with his dog. Fred walks in and immediately gets chewed out by Benson, but then states that he knew about this thing for a while now, and shows a potted planet with some numbers and other science stuff written all over it. Fred studies it and says, "Uhhh, yep. This is it." Benson then states that "them idiots on Mars" should've seen the planet way before anyone here on crummy ol' Earth.

We then get a shot of Mars, where a base station is set up. So I guess this is the future? Yet again, no idea, it's never said. Maybe the film makers should've just handed us the plot in three paragraphs and told us to make our own damn movie.

There's something going on that has Bob, who runs this little base on Mars, all worked up. Apparently a ship has lost control but we don't know why. We do eventually figure it out, so at least the movie is willing to share SOME information. Bob sends up another ship to rescue them and the rescue ship is full of constipated people. See, I wish I was able to take screen caps, so you could see I'm not making this up. The people in the crashing ship leave and in an effect that looks like my 8-year-old sister cobbled up together, two toy figures representing the astronauts randomly fly from one ship to the other. This doesn't make sense, I mean they just hurled themselves toward the ship? And they went pretty fast too. I guess in space, in the future, things up there is gonna go a lot faster then it is now.

The hapless astronauts are saved, but now THIS ship is about to go down and we figure out why. They're close to this planet that came out of nowhere and headed toward Earth. Oh and in case you haven't figured it out, this is the thing that was discussed earlier.

Now that everyone on Earth knows about it, they need a way to stop it from colliding with Earth. They reject the idea of sending some oil drillers up there to break it in half, cause that just sounds stupid, I mean, who'd do that? Instead, Benson insists everyone leaves it alone cause it won't crash into the Earth.

After a weird awkward edit and jump cut, Eve is running out of Fred's, I'm gonna say house, that's way up on a cliff, and involves 800 flights of stairs to get back and forth from. Fred calls out to Eve, but she decides to dis his macho self and latch onto the cranky old man. Eve states that Benson was right, it didn't crash, but instead it's just orbiting the planet.

This causes Benson to freak out and he immediately knows that the planet is still gonna destroy the earth, even giving it a countdown of 810 hours. Thankfully, he didn't say 525,600 minutes, otherwise he'd have AIDS and he wouldn't be able to pay his rent. Oh, and Benson thinks we should NOW blow it up.

Now, this seems like a basic plot idea. An alien planet somehow travels to Earth, remains in orbit with us, and in roughly 800 hours, it's gonna attack. So if a good screenwriter wrote this, some kind of battle would play out with us versus them, maybe even people stranded on the alien planet and fighting within. But no, instead we get some more boring science stuff.

See, because this planet is in orbit with us, it's gonna cause all kinds of fucked up weather problems, which I guess is the official cause of El Nino. Benson leaves his greenhouse for once and talks to "The Heads of The Nation Committee" or something long sounding like that. Benson gives a long speech about the planet and how it'll destroy us and that he should lead the expedition to the planet to explore it. The Head Head says "No, it's war!" which causes Benson to say "Ah yes. And I'm not of draft age." Ha-ha...but I am...Ha-ha...hey, wait.

Ok, I'm back from shooting myself in the foot. And a war has started. Bob is suppose to go up and blow the planet up. Kathy wants to go along because she loves him so damn much and they never want to be separated for the rest of their lives. In movie speak, that means one of them is gonna die. I'm gonna say right here and now if I ever become part of some group that's gonna do something remotely dangerous, I'm making sure everyone is single before leaving. Because as you know "Attached man/woman=certain doom". It's even worse if said person has kids, and if they haven't seen them in a few years, just blow yourselves up now and get it over with.

For some reason, Bob allows Kathy to go up there. Fred wants to go too because Eve left him for Benson, which comes as a shock to Eve. Hey, babe, you been leaving poor Fred to look at Hustler all these nights while you feed this old dude Viagra. Don't be that shocked. Benson allows Fred to go and off they go.

Up in space, one ship head toward the planet and before it can blow it up, a bunch of tiny saucers come out of nowhere and attack the ship. But that ship was full of old guys, so don't worry. And I'm sure they all haven't seen their wives and kids since World War Two. Realizing that anytime one of their ships goes near the planet, these saucers come out and attack, they try to trick them into shooting each other.

While flying around all Hans Solo like, one of them gets super close to Earth and our gravity causes it to weeble wobble, but not fall down. The other saucers retreat. Finally, the wobbly saucer crashes to Earth. Bob didn't tell the people of Earth about this, so I guess we have to assume this thing took out an entire village or city or something.

Benson tells Fred to grab whatever's inside and bring it to him immediately. Inside the saucer is just a cylinder thing with light in it. Kinda like a florescent bulb, but thicker, like Ron Jeremy size. (Oh, you were thinking it too.) Fred brings it to Benson and Benson studies it.

He realizes the light is some kind of communicating device and it's linked to whatever's on the planet. Benson then freaks out Bob, Kathy, Fred, Dr. Cornfield, and Eve when he starts laughing like a maniac and says, "IT'S LIKE MUSIC!!! I'LL COMPOSE THE MUSIC!!!! AND YOU'LL PLAY IT!!!!!". Now we know what happened to Mozart.

So they all head back into space, play this "music", which just sounds like sci-fi noise to me, and this causes all the other saucers to crash into me...baby...and I'll come into you.

Er...sorry. Crash into each other.

On Earth, Benson is throwing another temper tantrum when he insists he goes up and studies the planet before they (the military) blow it up. He says he learned from the light that there are some smart beings on the planet and he wants to study them. The Head Head says, "Ok, but you got three hours then we're blowing it to hell!".

So this time Benson tags along with Bob, Boyd, Kathy, Fred, and Eve to the planet to check it out. Benson, who got a psychic link with the planet a la "E.T", guides them to below the planet, where a bunch of dead aliens are. Well, he says they're dead aliens. I just see some black dots on the ground. And a more giant version of the florescent light is here, this time John Holmes size. Some dude who looks like Jerry Orbach tells Bob that the missile is gonna be launched in 5 minutes so hurry the fuck up already.

Benson insists on communicating with the John Holmes Light and runs off. Eve, who still has her crush, goes after him. Then Fred goes after her, causing Bob to go after him, causing Kathy to go after him. Boyd says "Fuck this" and goes back to the ship to beg Jerry Orbach to give them more time.

Jerry then puts Baby in the corner and launches the missile. Benson tells Eve to go back with Fred, who comes along. He drags Eve away and they get lost, along with Bob and Kathy. Kathy simply trips on a rock and falls down, but for some reason this makes her give up on life and tells them to leave her behind. Bob says "NO! I wanna break this stereotype right here and now!" and drags her along. Meanwhile Race Bannon is crying like a bitch when Bob and company show up. They launch. Benson is talking to John Holmes Light and says "I KNOW EVERYTHING!! AND YOU'RE GONNA KILL ME!" In other words, Benson knows the meaning of life now, but because the military are war mongers, they decide to blow it up. And oh boy, what an explosion. I think it actually did come from a Jonny Quest cartoon.

Eve cries out, "So long, professor...and thanks for all the fish." Kathy is lying down, apparently sick from tripping on a rock, and decides to play into the stereotype and die. Then Benson's dog runs to the greenhouse window, whimpers, and stares up in the sky.

And...fade to black.

I probably made the movie sound 10 million times more exciting then it really is. And it would've been exciting if we didn't get all this weird Technobabble throughout the movie. Oh, and I did forget about a female character, but she wasn't given a name and she didn't do much except taunt Fred and Eve every now and then.


-Jason