Aug. 21, 2007
RUTHERFORD ON FILM
'THE INVASION': A Psycho-Babble Spin on 'Body Snatchers' Tries Too Hard
By Tony Rutherford
Huntington News Network Critic
Unless you have viewed the prior versions of “The Invasion,” (a.k.a. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”), you would not recognize the re-focused 2007 update in which a shrink played by Nichole Kidman valiantly searches for her young son amidst what media calls a viral pandemic. Demonstrating that ‘perspective’ matters, the alien takeover has been distilled into a mostly mundane political coup d'etat.
Instead of an overwhelming amount of military and civilian confrontations, the much maligned remake half succeeds with its mother / son intimacy. The weight of the concept falls heavily on Kidman’s happy pill dispensing character who has mastered the intellectual prong while squirming to radiate requisite desperation and fear yet stay poker-faced to fool the enemy.
Rather than have pods falling all over the planet, a crashed space shuttle brings the germ which touches off the alien pandemic. That said, “The Invasion” has a stark, film noir stylish visual appearance, but it plays like two films in one: The mother’s search to find her child; the car chase to get him out of alien infested Baltimore.
Actually, the “buzz” revealed that producer Joel Silver had brought in the Wachowski Brothers to shoot an action filled ending.
But Silver more than tinkered with the initial cut. He had James (“V for Vendetta”) McTeigue reshoot a majority of the film originally helmed by Oliver (“Downfall”) Hirschbiegel.
The makeover, if you want to call it that, leaves massive script incongruities. For instance, the alien virus becomes a debate on the success and pitfalls of human emotion disguised in exchanges with psychiatrist Kidman that the ‘new people’ are no more changed than the mood alterations that come from a Prozac (or other anti-depressant) prescription.
As one patient proclaims, “My husband is not my husband [anymore],” that not enough psycho-babble make spewing spore vomit on one another a symbol for forced ‘happy’ medication. Jarringly, the so-called change to walking robots has scenes of sticky larva encapsulating the soon to be victims. It’s uncertain how after pollinating they still retain an intellectual side which can argue how the non-emotive ‘humans’ finally bring peace on earth.
Then, ironically, sleep brings on the metamorphous so it’s almost heresy to have scenes of the physician popping pills and Mountain Dew to keep her eye lids open.
Must I go forward? Someone had a potentially compelling new spin on an old ‘B’ sci-fi favorite --- Pivot the invasion around one single mom attempting to rescue her young son from the chaos of alien transformations. Visually, it would have stayed within a family and mutual friends fighting the spore infection. No wild chases. No heliport rescues. No blazing gun battles.
That take on the “Body Snatchers” must have turned off preview audiences. What’s on screen is partly family intimacy and resilience as anarchy spreads on the streets and the gotta have it violent confrontations as the invaders race to convert mom and kill her son.
** out of *****
RUTHERFORD ON FILM
'THE INVASION': A Psycho-Babble Spin on 'Body Snatchers' Tries Too Hard
By Tony Rutherford
Huntington News Network Critic
Unless you have viewed the prior versions of “The Invasion,” (a.k.a. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”), you would not recognize the re-focused 2007 update in which a shrink played by Nichole Kidman valiantly searches for her young son amidst what media calls a viral pandemic. Demonstrating that ‘perspective’ matters, the alien takeover has been distilled into a mostly mundane political coup d'etat.
Instead of an overwhelming amount of military and civilian confrontations, the much maligned remake half succeeds with its mother / son intimacy. The weight of the concept falls heavily on Kidman’s happy pill dispensing character who has mastered the intellectual prong while squirming to radiate requisite desperation and fear yet stay poker-faced to fool the enemy.
Rather than have pods falling all over the planet, a crashed space shuttle brings the germ which touches off the alien pandemic. That said, “The Invasion” has a stark, film noir stylish visual appearance, but it plays like two films in one: The mother’s search to find her child; the car chase to get him out of alien infested Baltimore.
Actually, the “buzz” revealed that producer Joel Silver had brought in the Wachowski Brothers to shoot an action filled ending.
But Silver more than tinkered with the initial cut. He had James (“V for Vendetta”) McTeigue reshoot a majority of the film originally helmed by Oliver (“Downfall”) Hirschbiegel.
The makeover, if you want to call it that, leaves massive script incongruities. For instance, the alien virus becomes a debate on the success and pitfalls of human emotion disguised in exchanges with psychiatrist Kidman that the ‘new people’ are no more changed than the mood alterations that come from a Prozac (or other anti-depressant) prescription.
As one patient proclaims, “My husband is not my husband [anymore],” that not enough psycho-babble make spewing spore vomit on one another a symbol for forced ‘happy’ medication. Jarringly, the so-called change to walking robots has scenes of sticky larva encapsulating the soon to be victims. It’s uncertain how after pollinating they still retain an intellectual side which can argue how the non-emotive ‘humans’ finally bring peace on earth.
Then, ironically, sleep brings on the metamorphous so it’s almost heresy to have scenes of the physician popping pills and Mountain Dew to keep her eye lids open.
Must I go forward? Someone had a potentially compelling new spin on an old ‘B’ sci-fi favorite --- Pivot the invasion around one single mom attempting to rescue her young son from the chaos of alien transformations. Visually, it would have stayed within a family and mutual friends fighting the spore infection. No wild chases. No heliport rescues. No blazing gun battles.
That take on the “Body Snatchers” must have turned off preview audiences. What’s on screen is partly family intimacy and resilience as anarchy spreads on the streets and the gotta have it violent confrontations as the invaders race to convert mom and kill her son.
** out of *****
