Subject: Review: Battlefield Earth (2000)

From: [email-masked] (Steven Bailey)
Date: 14 May 2000 18:31:51 GMT

I don't know from L. Ron Hubbard or Scientology, but I do know from bad
post-apocalyptic movies. Based on Hubbard's novel--and produced by its
star, John Travolta--Battlefield Earth  is Travolta's entry into the
Kevin Costner Egomania Contest.

Oh, and this movie doesn't have a simple title. The opening credits tell
us that the movie is "Battlefield Earth --A Saga of the Year 3000," to
distinguish it from "Duck Dodgers in the 24th-and-a-Half Century," I
suppose. Based on all the millennium information we had to stomach last
year, one would think that future civilizations 1,000 years just might
be more advanced and easier to live in than our current life. But of
course, a bright future isn't as photogenic as primitive people on
horseback in the Colorado mountains.

The story is that Earth was overrun by an advanced planet called
Psychlo, and its chief honcho Terl (Travolta) rules over Earth's
"man-animals" as their security officer. Terl tells us that Psychlo's
soldiers were so brilliant that their war with Earth lasted only nine
minutes. That's hard to believe, though, given that the brainpower of
Terl and his henchman Ker (Forest Whitaker) is on the level of Laurel
and Hardy. (Supposedly, Terl and Ker have the technology to endlessly
monitor their human prisoners. Yet prisoners are constantly escaping,
and at one point Terl deduces that humans' favorite food is live rats.)

The basic plot--which is all I could figure out from this muddle--is
that one of the prisoners, Jonnie (Barry Pepper), is headstrong enough
to escape his fate and eventually help other humans to do the same.
Jonnie's defiant streak is enough to help him and his cohorts commandeer
abandoned American landmarks--gold from Fort Knox, sophisticated
aircraft from Fort Hood (which Jonnie's crew learns to fly from just a
few hours in a flight simulator).

The movie's plot holes gape like abandoned cities, but that probably
won't bother the hardcore sci-fi crowd at whom this is aimed. Like Dune,
this seems to be one of those "sagas" that you have to be in on from the
start. At the screening I attended, a man behind me was babbling on
about the various plot aspects that he'd already seen and those he
anticipated. And for once, I wasn't bothered by theater chatter; I only
wished I had the guy next to me to explain the whole thing to me.

Other than his reverence for Hubbard and Scientology, one would be
hard-pressed to discern Travolta's motivation for putting this mess
on-screen. He certainly does his mentor no favors--buried under pasty
make-up, chortling like Orson Welles, and overacting at a level he
hasn't touched since "Welcome Back, Kotter." He also manages to
humiliate his wife, Kelly Preston, in a cameo that gives us an
unfortunate glimpse at what the Travoltas do behind closed doors.

Battlefield Earth is rated PG-13 for graphic violence and explosions,
and some adult language.

Submitted by: Steven Bailey
http://pages.hotbot.com/movies/skad13

Steven Bailey, a movie reviewer for The Beaches Leader newspaper in
Jacksonville Beach, Florida, has movie reviews posted in The Internet
Movie Database at:
http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Steven+Bailey

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