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Independence Day Movie Review

Independence Day is a 1996 science fiction action film directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Will Smith. It’s a ridiculously overrated movie.

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“I picked a hell of a day to quit drinkin’“

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This alien invasion movie of course acts more like a disaster movie than a true science fiction spectacle as is expected from Emmerich, a disaster-prone director who is a terrible filmmaker with his direction here being reliably very bad. The movie is also mediocre in plot and downright preposterous in some plot points, especially the one with the computer virus. The whole movie actually plays out in a very stupid scenario after an implausible scenario.

Yes, I do realize its appeal when it comes to the entertainment factor as it is quite fun at times. However, I personally dislike combat action movies so to me the other scenes, especially those where we could see the aliens themselves, were much more entertaining and enjoyable. I wish there were more scenes with them and less scenes with combat.

The character development is horrendous. They got all these famous actors, but none of them made any impact on this movie. Will Smith is forgettable. He was a great star during the nineties, but this is easily one of his weakest roles in those blockbusters. Bill Pullman plays this very annoying, perfect US president cliché, Jeff Goldblum is annoyingly underutilized and others are all forgettable. Unfortunately, the aliens themselves are much more interesting than humans here and the humans get the most screen time stupidly enough.

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Independence Day is a spectacle in terms of special effects. They are great for their time as the ship and the aliens look cool and the action is well executed. It is easy to see why the Academy would reward these effects. However, the movie is otherwise badly directed, very poorly structured and horribly paced. It is overlong and it does feel long with at times unnecessary sequences of poor, frustrating dialogue, especially as it relates to American patriotism. I hated all of those scenes as I always do.

Independence Day looks cool as its special effects were excellent for its time. It is also quite entertaining sometimes with the scenes with the aliens being the most interesting ones. However, Roland Emmerich’s directing is reliably terrible, the action/combat scenes take too much screen time, the overall plot and its various scenarios are difficult to buy and the excessive, cheesy American patriotism at display is incredibly annoying. It’s thus a very mediocre movie that somehow continues to get all these positive reviews when in reality it wasn’t and never will be a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.

My Rating – 2.5