I just had to see the first matinee of BE. The suspense was killing me. Here is my review.

First of all, the movie stunk. There were too many plot holes in it, but much more than plot holes were character mischaracterizations; or would that be character holes? Anyway, Barry Pepper's clean shaven face, nice teeth, nice hair and nice smile and decent English turned me off because he was supposed to be an uneducated cave dweller. Every time I would see his clean shaven face I would wonder how such a cave dweller did such a thing. And even when he was held captive in the Psychlo prison he looked too clean and proper to be in such a place.

Forest Whitaker, playing Terl's side kick (I don't believe his name was ever spoken -- that's one way for people to remember your real name from a movie ;) spoke way too many English idioms. I think a few of his lines were 'come on man', and honestly I was waiting for a few ebonic lines to boot. It just looked like him playing a part. It might have been more realistic if the Psychlo language were spoken more often, after all, why would you speak English if you were a Psychlo? It would have been better off completely just to drop the Psychlo language completely if they weren't going to use it more often.

Travolta's scenes seemed to be a mirror unto themselves. Several scenes started out with him being mean (in a nice way) promising something and then finally keeping his word, but with a twist. He would be very technical with what words he spoke and then finally reneging on his word by letting someone else do the dirty deed (remind you of something?)

Travolta does deserve an award for saying basically the same thing in so many scenes.

Some of the plot holes and ridiculous happenings were:

1) for the Psychlos being so smart, why is it that they couldn't see that cavemen could learn how to fly fighter Jets in less than 7 days? Also,time and time again, Johnny Goodboy Tyler proved his intelligence by escaping from the evil Psychlos. And then Terl would come along, catch him and then let him go for one ridiculous reason or another. This must have happened at least 6 times, all the while Terl or any other Psychlo never grimaced at the fact that they were being out smarted by an animal.

2) The cavemen and indigent 'man-animals' looked silly in how adept they were in communicating with each other. The end of the film looks as if that is where most of the 50 to 80 million dollar budget went (I doubt it, because how available computers are to create such effects. I really think that the budget was over stated, but I could be wrong). I might have enjoyed the ending but I just couldn't get over the fact that these cavemen were flying Jets after one week training, 1,000 years old or so; flying so well that they could maneuver through the ravaged city and destroy the Psychlo ships, which should have been much more advanced than theirs, since it was those ships that destroyed earth in a week or so.

3) Terl, after teaching Tyler how to fly his own ship in a few hours (using a virtual reality machine), showed him where to mine the gold. He gave him 2 weeks to fill up his ship with gold and fly back to him with it, or else he would (I forget exactly, but I believe he was going to kill his girl friend) use his 'leverage' against him. Tyler, because he now was a genius -- because he was put on a Psychlo osmosis machine and learned the Psychlo language in a day or so and millions of other facts, like advanced mathematics -- he knew that there was another place for Gold, Fort Knox. No, no, no, he didn't learn this fact from the osmosis machine exactly. Terl, the evil villain of the movie, just happened to bring him to a library to show him the ravages that the Psychlos caused Earth. Tyler, in a few hours learned millions of other pertinent facts too while at the library.

So now he is in Fort Knox, doors wide open when they get there, and he and a few other cave-men bring the gold back to Terl, in new crisp smelted bars. Well, well, Terl was too smart for this chap. He asked Johnny Goodboy Tyler why the bars were in perfect bars? Tyler simply explains to the advanced Psychlo that he knew that the Psychlos wouldn't accept gold in anything other than its pure form. Would you think that the evil villain would have questioned such a stance? But this is just Sci-fi, right? Terl decides now to cut his time in mining the rest of the gold in just 7 days because how adept they are at creating a smelting machine in the matter of days! That is the time that they have left to kill the Psychlo planet and the Psychlos on Earth, after they learn how to fly fighter Jets.

At this time I would have left in any other film, but I just had to see how it ended. The ending was as dumb as the middle part. But the beginning wasn't all that bad, like the first 10 minutes or so. Really, I like B flicks, but none that are to be taken this seriously and have as large a budget as this. If this movie were humorous, it might have been alright, but you could tell that it wasn't meant for humour at all.

The only good thing about it all was that it is going to be a smash failure. If it makes money, I'm going to call up David Miscavage personally and tell him my name, phone number and where I can be reached so he can personally Fair Game me. I feel real bad for those who have money invested in this film.