Neil Young’s Film Lounge – The Arrival

Published on: March 23rd, 2004

THE ARRIVAL

6/10

USA 1996
dir David Twohy
100 mins

An opportunistic cash-in on then-current we are not alone / aliens among us / eco-horror trends, The Arrival cheerfuly steals from The X-Files, Contact, Men in Black, though its real debt is to 1958 British picture Quatermass II, with its central idea of aliens speeding up global warming as a precursor to full-scale invasion.

A chubby, sweaty Charlie Sheen careers through proceedings on just the right note of pop-eyed paranoia as geeky scientist Zane, who accidentally stumbles across a mysterious signal while scanning the heavens for extra-terrestrial communications. He soon pieces together whats going on, but his attempts to blow the whistle are, of course, hindered at every turn by his sinister superiors, who, of course, turn out to be aliens-in-disguise themselves.

The script has an agreeably cobbled-together air, but the resulting movie is so rushed that the secondary characters – Zanes girlfriend; a little black street-kid who helps him out; a concerned ecologist – never come into proper focus. In particular, Lindsay Crouses ecologist, seems to have wandered in from another, better, picture – the film has no idea what to do with her or, indeed, how to get rid of her once she’s served her purpose, dithering over a ludicrously over-extended scene in which she moves around her hotel room, unaware its infested by deadly scorpions.

There are plenty more what were they thinking of scenes, including a bizarre non sequitur episode in which cast-iron baths fall through the sodden floors of the hotel bathrooms, and a late-on escapade where Sheen, having infiltrated the aliens subterranean lair, puts himself through their disguising process, emerging as a podgy Chicano with thick wig and porn-star moustache. These amusing touches keep things moderately watchable, but can’t hide the films central implausibility – if the aliens are so powerful, who don’t they use their technology to bump Sheen off, rather than sending a bloke with a sickle to do the job? The ending is also a bit of a damp squib, rather feebly open-ended – though surely with a cheap TV series, rather than a lucrative movie franchise, in mind.

by Neil Young

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