Battle for your refund

Battlefield Earth (R) Starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper, and Forest Whitaker, directed by Roger Christian

Where do I start? As you might know Battlefield Earth was a book written by L. Ron Hubbard, the same nut who founded Scientology. The book itself is about 1000 pages, which leads you to wonder "How can they fit it all in?". Simple answer - cut half the book out!

The movie starts out with Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a rebelious caveman, played by Barry Pepper, who want's to strike out on his own. But, his overscripted elder tells of the dangerous 'Demons' which live out in the world. As always, the rebelious youth goes out to see the world. Soon he mets up with some other cavemen and they go to the ruined city of Denver. This is where you're supposed to figure out that humanity had it's ass handed to us by aliens. These aliens, known as Psychlos, are crule and petty, only wanting to line their own pockets, and gain leverage against their co-workers. Our good neolithic hero get's captured by the Psychlos and is forced into slave labor. There he meets Terl, played by Jonh Travolta, a nasty alien, who is dumb as he is tall. I guess Travolta was trying to get the point across that he was a real bad guy. However, it boilded down to that he never really read the 'Evil Overlord' handbook. Travolta is really hammy in this film, he trys to make his charater look evil when it just makes him look stupid. He does so many things you wonder "Why is he in charge of everything?" As per any feel good movie, the aliens are stupid, the humans rebel, and there is some loving going on in there too.

The best part of the film had to be the patriotic overtones. In one scene Travolta takes the newly literate Pepper (via a 'learning machine') to the Congressional Libary, where he's let loose to read books. There he find the Bill of Rights, and he reads all the words carefully with happy music in the background. It made me so proud to be an American, I wanted to hug my flag right then and there *sob*. Also I really found the learning curve of the humans to be quite amazing. In one of the later scenes of the film a dozen cavemen learn how to fly Harrier Jump Jets in 1 week, using a flight simulator! Damn, where do I sign up to get one of those? You too can learn fly in combat aircraft in only half a day!

This as a whole was my bad movie of the year. I've gotta watch at least one every year, to make all the other movies better. I really have to feel for Forest Whitaker who was the only decent actor in the movie, but got stuck playing Ker, Travolta's side-kick. I also feel for Travolta, who's been trying 10 years to get this movie in theaters. Don't worry John, I hear they are making Scientology: The Musical it should be good. All in all, this movie sucked, I give it a 2 out of 10