BATTLEFIELD EARTH

Watching an asinine movie like Battlefield Earth, one can only assume John Travolta has a death wish for his career. After all, this is the actor who once parlayed the super-stardom of Saturday Night Fever and Grease into the mercifully forgotten Two of a Kind and the ironically titled Perfect. Here Travolta plays a sinister tyrant called Terl, whose alien race has destroyed Earth's civilization and enslaved mankind. When one of Terl's greedy ploys gives too much power to a renegade human named Johnnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper), mankind has the leverage to start fighting back. Terl and his fellow aliens are laughable cardboard bad guys who look like Rastafarian-Klingon hybrids in KISS garb, and their human counterparts' dreams of freedom are outweighed only by the need for a haircut and a shower. Director Roger Christian, a longtime special-effects wizard for George Lucas, cloaks the entire picture in shades of black and gray, as if to hide the many plot loopholes and Star Wars ripoffs. After this, Travolta may want to rethink subscribing to a religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard, a guy who made his name with this disposable sci-fi trash. And if he's lucky, Battlefield Earth won't send Travolta back to the depths of Hollywood oblivion. PG-13 (Brian Libby)