RATING: 1 out of 4 stars

Futuristic `Battlefield Earth' doesn't even work as a spoof

By Robert W. Butler The Kansas City Star Published: Friday, May 12, 2000

You can stop worrying about "Battlefield Earth" being some kind of stealth indoctrination tool for Scientology.

Yeah, it's based on a sci-fi novel written by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of that oft-maligned belief system, and, yeah, it was produced by and stars John Travolta, who next to Tom Cruise is Hollywood's most visible Scientologist.

But surely if proselytization was on the agenda Travolta and company could have come up with something better than this -- two cliche-riddled hours of lackluster melodrama unlikely to keep the attention even of an undemanding 10-year-old.

This us-vs.-aliens yarn begins in the year 3000, long after Earth has been conquered by a race of 8-foot-tall, dreadlocked bad guys called the Psychlos (think Klingons on growth hormones). When we first meet our hero, Jonnie (played by Barry Pepper, the sniper in "Saving Private Ryan"), he's dressed in buckskin and living a primitive life with his tribe high in the Rockies.

But Jonnie wants to see the world beyond his village; venturing forth, he's soon captured by the Psychlos, who put him to work with the other captive humans in the huge dome that covers what's left of Denver. (Inside the dome, humans must wear breathing devices to handle the Psychlo atmosphere; outside the dome, it's the aliens who must dangle unsightly filters from their nostrils.)

The baddest of the Psychlos is security chief Terl (Travolta), who is scheming to make an illegal killing on Earth's mineral resources and get back to the luxuries of the home planet. He's like every sneering Bond villain rolled into one big cheesy wad; when he's not abusing his human slaves, he's making life miserable for his none-too-bright second in command (Forest Whitaker) in what appears to be a misguided alien version of Abbott-and-Costello-type comedy.

Impressed by Jonnie's rebelliousness and resourcefulness, Terl subjects the young human to a crash course in Psychlo technology and language; his plan is to use Jonnie as part of his get-rich-quick scheme. It backfires, of course, by providing the young rebel with all the resources he needs to destroy the Psychlo empire.

OK, so we've heard this one before. Still, there are a couple of moments early on when "Battlefield Earth" (it was scripted by Corey Mandell) shows signs of actually having its wits about it. There's a nice visual joke when Jonnie stumbles across his first evidence of the "old" civilization -- a crumbling miniature golf course filled with bizarre outsized "hazards."

But it doesn't take long for the film to find a rut and stay there.

Part of the problem is that "Battlefield Earth" wants to be campy -- Travolta, at least, seems to be playing it for laughs. But successful camp requires a genuine appreciation of the inanities of the genre being spoofed, and Mandell's script hasn't the insight or the focus for that. It's just a lot of lame jokes lobbed at the screen in the hope that something will stick.

The acting is negligible because there are no characters here. The humans are all hairy and nondescript -- they might as well be hiding inside monkey suits -- while the Psychlos are little more than lumbering heavies.

Beyond its near-total absence of internal logic or emotional content, "Battlefield Earth" fails even as eye candy. The f/x are just adequate (the film's look is badly compromised by a reliance on thoroughly unconvincing matte paintings); the production design is strictly back-lot post-Armageddon; and Roger Christian, a director of no discernible style or intelligence, hasn't the slightest idea how to stage an exciting action sequence.