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Battlefield Earth Star-producer-Scientology scion John Travolta plays Terl, an alien who runs security for the dreadlocked Psychlos, who've taken over Earth circa 3000. "Man-animals" are forced to live Clan of the Cave Bear-style until a scrappy rebel (Barry Pepper) stumbles across the Declaration of Independence and, thus inspired, schemes to save the planet with nuclear weapons, flight simulators, Fort Knox, and shots insultingly reminiscent of Star Wars (thanks to director Roger Christian, a former Lucas lackey). Meanwhile, greedy Terl hatches his own plan to ... oh, forget it. Why dwell on the ridiculous plot, when there is so much wrong here? Battlefield Earth is a shoddy sci-frightmare. The effects are unexciting, the soundtrack sucks, and the whole film consists of about two scenes: Travolta threatening to "vaporize" someone and emitting an evil laugh and Pepper running slo-mo, usually through some ludicrous hail of debris. So much of the movie is in slo-mo that if they played the whole thing at normal speed, it would have lasted maybe 25 minutes. Which still would have been too long. For some, this movie might fall into the so-bad-it's-good category; myself, I'd rather be hit in the face with a copy of Dianetics. (1:57) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Galaxy, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, Stonestown, UA Berkeley. (Eddy)
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