The effects don’t hold up. The acting was soon figured out to be the only range 95% of these actors could show (Will Smith being the 5% that expanded to new emotional heights in Pursuit of Happiness and Seven Pounds). The speeches and one-liners and cliche romances are old-fashioned, retired and full of cheese. But! I still watch this movie once a year, and although it’s not all to do with him, Jeff Goldblum made this movie for me.
Now-a-days the great action movies involve fantastical characters, such as Iron Man and the LOTR series. Then there is the ever present James Bond, with Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace - but this character has been around for decades, so of course we would enjoy our favorite secret agent. Jason Bourne is another great character, the new-age Bruce Willis, with way more fighting and jumping power - yet John McClane will never be replaced. So Independence Day, for me, represents a time back in the late 80s and 90s when we repeatedly got great action films (think The Rock and Face Off), instead of the Jason Statham roller coaster and the influx of cheesy fantasy movies derived from anything the studios can milk, from Greek mythology to some of the all-time best selling fantasy novels.
IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes are almost in agreement concerning this movie, 65% and 61% respectively, which means this movie passes most peoples “shitty movie” line into an “okay movie” area. Good enough for me, so it should be good enough for you.
Girl’s Rating: I hear the fat lady singing whenever I watch this.
Guy’s love for Goldblum...
Goldblum, Goldblum what would I do without you. He seems to be a guy that just does what he feels like doing. What I mean by that is that there’s no snobbery when it comes to picking movies for him. First there’s “The Fly” which was a serious horror movie then he did some drama. Later he made this and “Jurassic Park” and the last movie I saw with him was a WWII movie called “Adam Ressurected”. He’s been great in all of these movies and if he wasn’t part of the cast of ID4 the movie would have been forgotten long ago.
What else? I love Sci-Fi which makes me enjoy this movie. Not one of the better in this genre but I remember being blown away the first time I saw it. Now that I’m older I laugh at the lame one liners and the huge plot holes that this script is ridden with. The dog Boomer is one of the things that bothers me here. Especially when he escapes the flames from the initial blast from one of the spaceships.
Girl loves this movie so I guess that I have to see it a couple of times more. I don’t mind - there are worse movies that she could enjoy, “Legally Blonde” for example.
Guy’s Rating: Great piece of blockbuster history but someone needs have a talk with Emmerich so he stops making movies like “2012” and “Day After Tomorrow”. One of these movies was enough.
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