LOS ANGELES -- Generally, Hollywood executives are relieved when their movies are screened for the first time and hilarious laughter erupts from the audience.

But not when the movie isn't a comedy.

"Battlefield Earth," John Travolta's epic, expensive and bizarre science fiction film based on a book by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, was greeted with guffaws and shrieks and hoots of ridicule from an audience of entertainment journalists, critics and others at a packed theater in Century City earlier this week.