Battlefield Earth

It's the year 3000 and man is an endangered species. The Psychlos, an alien race of 10-foot-tall reptilian humanoids (essentially Klingons with dreadlocks), have laid waste to Earth and enslaved man as their beast of burden. From a barbaric tribe in the Rockies, a tenacious "man-animal" (Barry Pepper, the piercing sharpshooter from Saving Private Ryan) acquires the know-how to operate Psychlo aircraft and weaponry; and, ho-hum, all hell breaks loose when he launches an uprising to take back the planet.

Based on sci-fi writer and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's novel of the same name, Battlefield Earth strives for the kind of insurrection fever that made Planet of the Apes and Independence Day so infectious, but the miscued camp and underachieving action merely unload it as a bombastic concoction. Even Sci-tol proponent John Travolta, who is intermittently engaging as the chief imperial alien, and a smattering of cool FX can't atone for the cheesy futuristic schlock.

-- Tom Meek