Having said all that, I can now go a step further and say what's readily apparent: I didn’t expect much from “Alien vs Predator.” Had I not gone to an advanced free screening (‘free’ being the key word), I would not have made a trip to the theater to see this movie. Why? Because I’m just not that keen on movie monsters duking it out for a couple of hours. It’s not my idea of a good time (not that I have anything against people who enjoy this type of film). But I’d also like to state I wasn’t ready to slap it with a negative review before even seeing it.
The beginning of “AvP” is pretty laughable. There’s lots of bad dialogue with characters stating the obvious, and the easiest route to get a chuckle from the audience is always the path taken. But that’s just the first half hour or so. After billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) assembles a crack team to go investigate the mysterious appearance of a pyramid, the action really takes off. You can forget all about the dialogue, the plot, the reasoning behind why people are where they are, and why the aliens and the predators are having a go at one another, which, if you must know, has to do with predators visiting Earth once every hundred years dating back thousands of years. While here, they go through this whole right of passage thing where they hunt and kill aliens. The humans are just pretty much sacrifices to get the hunt underway. From that basic idea springs forth the events of “AvP.”
The fight scenes between aliens and predators seem to have been accomplished without much CGI, which is a good thing as sometimes CGI is just an intrusive force in a movie of this type. On a weirdly related note, there were times when the choreography of the fights reminded me of the pro-wrestling snippets I’ve seen while channel surfing. I kind of expected a predator to tag his partner and jump into the ring. That’s just the way the fights look visually.
As far as the acting goes, it’s actually pretty decent considering all the non-movie monsters have a limited appeal when placed in a scene with the movie’s real attractions. Sanaa Lathan seems to believe in the character she’s playing, and emerges as a strong female lead in this male-dominated genre. Lance Henriksen appears to relish being back in an ‘alien’ environment. The rest of the pyramid-exploring team, including Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner, and Sam Troughton, never overtly wink at the audience. They take the premise and setting of the movie as serious as possible.
“Alien vs. Predator” is a silly, fun, entertaining, popcorn movie. Analyzing it too much just gets in the way of letting yourself have a good time. Even a pre-release non-“Alien vs. Predator” fan such as myself found plenty of reasons to give this one a high recommendation. Grab some munchies, forget about the story, and let your brain take a short but enjoyable “AvP” vacation.
GRADE: B
"Alien vs. Predator" was directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and is rated PG-13 for violence, language, horror images, slime, and gore.
