A Review by 'Light House Shines' (Negative, Frequent Minor Spoilers)
March 2001

A few days ago I managed to see the second ever public test screening of Dreamwork's new SCI-FI summer comedy Evolution. A film I was really looking forward to seeing until I actually sat down and started to watch this mediocre piece of cliched cinema which as you can guess is nowhere near as good as I thought it was going to be! The trailers for this film are especially misleading, at least the teaser trailer certainly is. While the movie does indeed start off in the desert somewhere in Arizona (I think), it does not feature an amateur astronomer with a huge telescope being struck dead by a rouge Meteor. Rather the film begins with a clueless Wayne Green (Sean William Scott) practicing life saving techniques on a dummy in an old abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere all because he wants to be a fireman and not a perverted plastic humping freak. Which is pretty much what the local authorities and townsfolk think once they come to his rescue after the infamous alien spore infested meteorite crash lands into the ground and underground caverns below, completely smashing the abandoned shack and his car in the process ( none of this was a funny or as dramatic as it could or should have been).

Not soon after all the commotion two scholars, Ira Kane (David Duchovny)and Harry Block ( Orlando Jones) from the local junior college make their way onto the scene to discover the Meteorite which is firmly lodged in an ancient series of interconnecting underground caverns that run beneath pretty much the entire area and surrounding cities...This point is important so pay attention! So like any person of science they proceed to hack small pieces of the Meteorite off and place it into a plastic bag for further scientific study and pay little to no attention to the fact that the strange Meteorite from space is now oozing a weird goo like substance and that it originally came from out space! Which reminds me, if I came across a Meteorite I do not think I would touch it or come near it until I knew it wasn't radio active and/or had actually cooled down to the point where I could touch it. One of the many stupid things the people repeatedly do in this film which drove me crazy although it is a comedy so I was probably being a little too picky as a whole ( maybe I was cranky that day because I hadn't eaten)

Within a few hours of their initial discovery both David Duchovny and Orlando Jones' character discover that the gooey substance inside their Meteor sample contains multiple single cell celled organisms that quickly evolve within a matter of hours into multi celled organisms who posses 10 base pair chromosomes while us Earth born humans only possess 4. Leading them both to the outlandish and oh so surprising conclusion that their Meteorite and the oozing substance therein are extraterrestrial in origin...Well Duh!? But before they can publish their finding or reap the scientific rewards the army gets wind of what is going on and completely closes off the area and essentially bars both from continuing their work on the ever growing and evolving new life form(s) the Meteorite has created or brought with it ( The cavern is now a huge and ever evolving micro Eco system). Initially starting off with simple single celled organisms moving on to flat worms that quickly evolve into fishes and insects who quickly evolves into lizards and lower mammals and so on. Giving the audience some truly unique and dare I say rather impressive glimpse at what other life forms might have looked like if they did not originate on Earth. Although these glimpses are too few and far in between as truthfully I found myself rather bored whenever the screen didn't feature some new creature or would be alien invader. Since most of them really did look rather interesting and that is pretty much the whole point of the film, to see alien creatures evolve and slowly take over the Earth as they are the real stars of this film to begin with.

Which is not to say that the actual actors in the film weren't funny or didn't manage to hold their own, it's just that they were a lot less interesting as a whole that the CGI creature up on screen. Especially Mr. Duchovny and Mrs. Moore who I normally love in anything they do, yet was a little let down by their respective performances in this film. Since Duchovny's performances was only slightly more upbeat than his weekly and soon to be non existent rendition of Mulder which I know will haunt him till the day he dies. While Moore's clumsy Allison Reed CDC characters really wasn't all that funny since even Sandra Bullock was better at fake falling than Moore in Miss Congeniality. Plus the ill conceived, executed and seemingly last minute romantic sub plot featuring them both was truly pointless and added nothing to the story and really should be left out altogether. Just as the court room scene where the military basically sues both Kane and Block into staying away the Meteorite they helped discover, deeming the situation as a matter of national security. All of which can simply be left on the cutting room floor as that particular scene went nowhere and once again adds nothing special to the film. In fact the scenes only real purpose was to let the audience find out about Kane's scientific past with the military where he created and tested drugs with horrific side effects on unsuspecting American soldiers ( Find another/better way to let the audience know this!). Supposedly giving him a dark and foreboding past which didn't really work with the confines of a film that is obviously geared towards the whole family and will not have a rating higher than a PG-13 at best.

Specifically since even the numerous deaths at the ever growing and evolving races of aliens hands/claws were pretty watered down as a whole. Though it will never cease to amaze me at how many (stupid) characters in film after film, when presented with some unknown form of life that either has a set of stingers, claws or a big wide gaping mouth that you just know if jam packed with row upon row of razor sharp teeth. Will proceed to stick out their hands as if to pet their newly discovered creature like it was a house cat or something equally non threatening. Often with the most devastating of results as several people in this film found out the hard way (Remember the line "There is always time for lubricant," when you see this film!). Either way like I said the film as a whole is visually very stimulating and most of the performances are passable and even funny, especially in the cases of Jones and Scott. Though the main reason to see this film or for anyone to see this film is for the alien life forms and that is pretty much it, and only the smaller Aliens in the beginning of the film are worth your time. Not the much larger than one life single alien blob towards the end as that way just lame and really needs to be beefed up and/or eliminated altogether or else pretty everyone who sees this film is going to be as disappointed in this film as I was.

As always if you have any questions or comments about anything that was just written about please feel free to send an email to lighthouseshines@hotmail.com and someone will get back to you just as soon as possible-THANKS!

Review courtesy of darkhorizons.com.