Evolution (120 mins, PG) Directed by Ivan Reitman; starring David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott
If the Farrelly brothers ever decided to try their hand at directing The X Files , it might turn out a little like Evolution. As genre-fusions go, this Dreamworks production is fairly inspired: all your favourite teen-flick jokes, with a sci-fi twist. There's the alien fart joke, the alien sick joke, the alien enema, the alien threatening to eat your testicles - what on Earth, or off it, could be better?
David Duchovny plays a science teacher with a past. Unbeknown to his fellow staff at Glen Canyon Community College in Arizona, Ira Kane once worked at the Pentagon, where he developed a vaccine for anthrax. He tested it on hundreds of US soldiers, who dubbed their illness 'the Kane madness'. No prizes for guessing what the symptoms were: vomiting, diarrhoea, chronic flatulence, erectile dysfunction... Still, Ira's scientific nous comes in handy when a meteor lands in the middle of the desert, quite near where he works. Accompanied by his colleague Harry Block (Orlando Jones), a geology teacher with a slightly less solid grasp of the facts ('Ira, I'm no biologist, but just how many cells do single-cell organisms have?'), he sets out to take some meteor samples.
The blue goo they extract is full of cells that reproduce at an impossible rate: its DNA has 10 base pairs, while all life on Earth only has four. Or, as Ira explains for Harry's benefit: 'They're aliens.' Quite a discovery. Harry is torn: should he continue to coach women's volleyball, where there's a guaranteed steady rate of lithe young legs, or start worrying about his taxes? 'Is the Nobel Prize paid in instalments?' he wonders.
Someone else, however, has pipped them to the post. By the time Harry and Ira return to the scene of the extraterrestrial crime, Ira's old pals from the Pentagon are there in full force, delighted to have the opportunity to make his life hell. But hell turns out to be other life forms; the meteor breeds worms, which turn into mutant reptilian bulldogs, which turn into giant Jurassic creatures with wings. It looks like evolution backwards, but it's evolution all right - 200 million years' worth in the space of two hours. In two months, the aliens will take over the United States, and humans will be extinct. The Governor of Arizona (Dan Aykroyd) is desperate: should he go for the military option ('lots and lots of napalm'), or the solution offered by our little chemistry-set heroes - 300 gallons of selenium sulphide, otherwise known as Head and Shoulders shampoo?
The leader of the government mission is the hapless ice queen and love interest Dr Allison Reed (Julianne Moore). She plays - on the understanding that the gags here are fashioned after those in the Naked Gun films - the Priscilla Presley role. She falls over at every opportunity, and sometimes when there isn't an opportunity but she feels it might get a laugh. It doesn't.
Moore is the weakest link in a comedy whose premise is that the central characters are hopeless but heroic. It's hard to understand why Moore is so bad at the sorts of roles where she is supposed to be irritating or laughable. She was similarly appalling in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune , in which she played an amateur actress who extended her histrionics beyond the stage. Perhaps Moore feels she has to separate herself from the part, to indicate that she understands the role is stupid. Everything is done with an exaggerated nod and wink, as if she can't leave the audience to do the laughing.
Self-awareness works better in other parts of the film. Reitman, a Hollywood veteran who produced National Lampoon's Animal House and directed Ghostbusters (we'll pass swiftly over Junior and Kindergarten Cop), knows you can't play the sci-fi thing straight any more. There are spoofs of other movies dotted about everywhere - E.T., Planet of the Apes, The X Files, Jurassic Park, The Blob, even a scene accompanied by harp music that is like 'Snow White in Outer Space'. Reitman has also added to the central dynamic duo a slacker sidekick played by Seann William Scott, star of such juvenile delinquencies as American Pie, Road Trip, and the edifyingly titled Dude, Where's My Car?. Scott's pedigree suggests what he's here for, and it works: the crowds should be skateboarding all the way to the box office.
Duchovny, who can look like the young Richard Gere at times, does a great deadpan routine that takes the stuffing out of those who have played equivalent roles more seriously (including, of course, himself). Jones is the postmodern black comic hero, a man who thinks he knows what he's there for. 'I seen this movie,' he says at one point, 'the black dude dies first.'
The line is a sign to the audience that the film is playing with the rules. But it's also a sign that in many ways it's not: of course you can see the jokes coming, so sit back and enjoy the view.
Philip French is away
