Battlefield Earth Scifientology fails to convert.

Oh, man. What a let down.

Now I know it seems unlikely that one could be so disappointed by something for which one had, really, no expectations to begin with, but Battlefield Earth managed to achieve the impossible. Maybe I'm just picky, but I feel kinda gypped. The costumes, the makeup, the subliminal messages destined to transform our nation into a Dianetics- spewing cult -- how, after all, could the movie that brought the phrase "John Travolta's giant prosthetic crotch" into the public vernacular fail to at least amuse, if not enlighten?

And sure, the film had its moments -- the Jar Jar-esque hologram that served as a prophet for all humanity being a particular highlight -- but I wanted something more, something greater. I mean, I'm young. I'm malleable. I once longed for Danny Zuko as much as any red-blooded American girl. Hell, I even run a scifi website. I am, in so many ways, a prime target for indoctrination. So what went wrong? Why did Battlefield Earth -- an adaptation of the novel by scifi writer/All- Powerful God L. Ron Hubbard -- fail to convert? Were the hidden messages inserted between the frames -- oh come on, you know they were there -- repelled by my cynical mind? Was the profundity of the dialogue just too much for a simple soul like myself to bear? Or could it be, just maybe, that the movie absolutely, unequivocally, unredeemingly, sucked?

I'm no L. Ron Hubbard or anything, but I'm leaning towards the yes. If Scientology is the religion of the stars, then Battlefield Earth is the ultimate celebrity vanity project. For all of its ostensible metaphysical purposes -- and I'm sure that for some folks out there this is the true version of The Greatest Story Ever Told -- Battlefield Earth resembles nothing so much as what a bunch of ten-year-olds would create if given some Star Wars knock-off action figures, a video camera, and heavy pharmaceuticals. The Jehovah's Witnesses have a more subtle and effective method of recruitment. Ugly, disjointed, and borderline incoherent -- oh hell, just borderline -- Battlefield Earth falls short of even being a guilty pleasure.

Travolta, perhaps the most famous Scientologist in the world, stars as Terl, an evil alien "Psychlo", who, at best, resembles an extremely well-endowed member of the KISS Army. Terl, with the help of his cohort Ker (Forest Whitaker), rules over an Earth 1000 years in the future, where humanity has reverted to a primordial state of being. Silly man wanders the forests and the mountains, utterly helpless to the whims of evil Terl. For example, Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler -- a particularly rebellious "Man-Animal" played by Barry Pepper -- at one point is denied four minutes of oxygen by his evil overlords. Desperate, he runs through a room with no air -- where fires burn brightly at every turn! My, how the laws of chemistry have progressed in the coming millennium! Johnny's world is an ugly one, full of collapsed buildings, ragged landscapes, and piss-poor direction. There were times I actually wanted to see more of Johnny's world -- okay, fine, more of Barry Pepper with that long, blonde hair -- but the inept, clumsy direction and editing amounted to one-second shots of monochromatic waste. As Johnny would speak, the camera would shoot along to a random Psychlo; as Travolta rambled on about "leverage" -- seemingly a most important tenant of the scifientology cult -- we would be greeted by a Man-Animal making a pig noise or a tin-can spaceship looming in the sky.

All of this confusion didn't stop Our Heroes from stamping out such Travolting developments; despite Terl's high-pitched shrieking and rambling to his inferior "ratbrain", the Man-Animals managed to master the nuances of nuclear physics and armed warfare in a mere week. I'm not quite sure whether their actions saved the human race -- man may have been endangered, but women, judging from Battlefield Earth, were just about extinct -- but they certainly couldn't save the movie. After about ten minutes of dialogue, it became apparent that Battlefield Earth was never going to be good, but I assumed John Travolta in platform shoes and dreadlocks would at least sustain me through to the end. Alas, such was not the case. There's a line between that which is inadvertently, entertainingly bad and that which is just so horrendous it becomes unwatchable, and Battlefield Earth never got to the crosswalk.

DROOL FACTOR: Barry Pepper. For those who wish their seventh-grade crush on Sebastian Bach of Skid Row to be revived, here's your man. But please, get a new agent!

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: John Travolta's giant prosthetic crotch. And everything else.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: A bit hard to come by when there's only one girl on the planet. Fellow Scientologist/John Travolta's wife Kelly Preston as a Psychlo concubine doesn't really help matters any either. -- Sarah Kendzior

Battlefield Earth is now playing nationwide.

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