Battlefield Earth DVD > Reviews > Travolta At Quite Possibly His Worst

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Disliked it
Story	Very weak
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	Not bad special effects .  Barry Pepper's acting wasn't too bad .
Disadvantages:	Lack of credibility .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I only watched this movie because my husband thought it would be fun to see a universally slated movie. My first impression - this is sooooo terrible. The only sci-fi movie more ridiculous than this movie is Dark Star and that was meant to be ridiculous. This looked like it was supposed to be taking itself seriously. While, the plot should have been fine, they turned the script into a masterpiece of disbelievability.

The Basic Premise

It's the year 3000. Man is no longer the dominant species. They are used by the cruel alien race of Psychlos who treat them as animals, believing them to be less intelligent than dogs. Terl (John Travolta) runs the planet, using the 'man-animals' as slaves.

Tyler(Barry Pepper - Enemy of the State) leaves his mountain home and is captured by the Psychlos and put to work. Terl, seeing that he displays intelligence that far exceeds their expectation, decides to teach him the Psychlos' language and knowledge using a machine designed to train Psychlos. He hopes to achieve the impossible and forbidden, to use 'man-animals' as miners rather than paying Psychlo workers and so increase profitability. However by teaching Tyler these things he turns him into a dangerous enemy who seeks his downfall and that of the Psychlo race in order to free mankind from that oppressive yoke.

In theory that premise should have worked, making for a fairly decent movie. However, it fell flat on it's face in the presence of characters which lacked credibility. John Travolta's character particularly was terrible. It may just have been making the best of a bad script, but this movie certainly did his acting credibility no good at all. I like John Travolta, and enjoy his acting in most things, but this was not a movie to make me think well of him. His lack of credibility is unfortunately joined by Forest Whitaker who played his second in command Ker. I haven't seen enough of Forest Whitaker in good movies to say for certain what his acting skills are like. But in this movie, he wasn't very good at all, mainly because the movie stank.

Barry Pepper's acting however, I found was quite good, given that it definitely was not the best script out there. His character was well-played, and he showed conviction in his character to the last.

The movie's main downfall, I think, was the fact that the characters were very two-dimensional. There was no depth to them at all, so there was nothing to give the film that little bit of credibility it so desperately needed.

Special Effects

The special effects were pretty good actually. There was nothing in it that made me think, well hang on a minute that doesn't look right. Except that these huge aliens varied in size to the humans when they in the same shot. This was probably the only thing in the movie I found to have any credibility. This was directed by Roger Christian who apparently was responsible for the effects in Star Wars. (I did check it out on IMDB, and he was on the set direction for the first {4th} Star Wars movie) With that under his belt he could afford to do something like this.

The Bottom Line

I didn't find this movie to be very good at all. I suppose it wasn't that bad really, it had some redeeming qualities in Barry Pepper. But not enough! If you want a serious movie with a plot you can find believable, watch something else like Harrison Bergeron (Sean Astin's performance in this is brilliant). If you want a comedy which obviously doesn't take itself seriously, watch Red Dwarf, Galaxy Quest or Dark Star. If you want to laugh at a movie simply because of how bad it is, then you can watch this.

Special Features
- TV spots "Go" and "Psychlo"
- Behind the scenes documentary "Evolution and Creation"
- Creative visual effects featurette.
- John Travolta's alien make-up test feature.
- Production stills and story boards.
- Commentaries by Director Roger Christian and Production Designer Patrick Totopoulis
- Hidden features menu
- Web enablement menu (For PC users)
- Interactive menus
- Scene selection
- Trailer

Languages
- English
- English subtitles
- English for the Hearing Impaired.
So basically just English then.

Rating 12

This features Dolby Digital Sound, and software for PC's in the form of PC Friendly. Note, this will not work on Macintosh computers.

The web enablement menu includes access to the "original theatrical website," the whole website on your DVD-ROM.

If you're into special features, you'll have a field day with these. Personally I don't think much of them particularly commentaries, which usually involve them talking their way through the whole movie. Not exciting!