F I L M By Ian Grey

CAMEO: Battlefield Earth

Directed by Roger Christian

It's the year 3000, and aliens who are total assholes have long since taken over Earth, leaving Homo sapiens as an endangered species of total idiots. John Travolta, playing head alien Terl in goatee and monkeylike makeup, is in particularly foul spirits because he's stuck lording over the remaining "human animals" from an Earth headquarters that looks frighteningly similar to the set of Duran Duran's "The Wild Boys" video. Apart from Travolta, the only remotely memorable alien character is played by a slumming Forest Whitaker, done up as a cross between the predator from Predator and Diana Ross.Undaunted by the hackneyed setup and the ridiculous makeup, rebellious human Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper) decides to take on the aliens, who, as it turns out, are called Psychlos, of the planet Psychlos, where everything is purple. Impressed by the human's pluck, and greedy as all get out, Terl/Travolta offers Tyler a gig mining gold that requires Tyler to learn everything about Everything via the borrowing of The Matrix's virtual-reality rapid-education sequence. In so doing, Terl also gives the human the means with which to destroy the Psychlos. This is good, as Tyler is such a total loser that we'd never get to Act 3 without it.

Finally (but in time for the effects-filled climax), Tyler and a newly recruited band of merry morons hatch a harebrained scheme to regain power on Earth via the use of remarkably well-preserved Harrier jets and nuclear arms that did absolutely nothing to stop the Psychlos from conquering Earth a thousand years prior. The rebel humans, who earlier couldn't figure out how many sides are needed to construct a proper triangle, only need about five minutes to figure out how to pilot their Harriers. But why quibble?

If nothing else, Battlefield Earth--faithfully based on the late Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard's potboiler of the same name (and presumably serving as Scientologist/co-producer Travolta's homage to his messiah)--achieves what must be a land-speed record for plagiarism, ripping entire scenes and/or ideas from the oft-quoted The Matrix, Planet of the Apes, Blade Runner, Quest for Fire, Star Wars, Braveheart, Spartacus, and Total Recall. Still, it does offer the uniquely metaphorical Psychlos, who, being a bunch of total pricks, are equipped with huge codpieces bulging with alien penises. Which, along with a scene featuring the Psychlos killing cows for kicks, makes this a literal cock-and-bull story, and adds further to its future video-store status as a sci-fi Showgirls.