**This review is rated "R" for language (which is sort of odd 
considering the movie is only rated PG-13)**

"Evolution"

Starring: a whole lot of computer-generated special effects. 

Oh, yeah...and David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Julianne Moore, 
Seann William Scott...etc.

Actually, if I wanted to be technical here, I would say that 
the star of the movie is a giant meteor that crashes in Arizona 
since that is what starts the whole ball of wax rolling. (Boy, 
am I mixing my metaphors or what?) This is not necessarily a 
bad thing though, since the special effects are pretty cool.

First, we meet Wayne Grey (Seann), an aspiring firefighter. 
Wayne takes a practice dummy out into the desert the night 
before his fireman's exam (I don't know about most people, but 
I wouldn't want him to be my rescuer considering the "first 
aid" he performed on the dummy!), when the aforementioned 
meteor hits. As he says later, "Yeah, I found it. It bounced my 
car 200 feet in the air!"

Cut to Dr. Ira Kane (David), a biology professor at a local 
community college. Let me just say right now that I am very 
familiar with the teaching profession. My parents both are - or 
were - teachers, as are all friends of my family. Therefore, 
I couldn't help but think about how accurate - or inaccurate - 
everything related to teaching is in this movie. 

The first words out of Ira's mouth are "though you may think 
that a biology professor making an excess of $17,500 a year..." 
This is the point when the pen I am using to write notes on the 
movie for this review crashes into the television screen. Oh, 
did I forget to mention that my mother works in what may be the 
lowest paying school district in the country?

Ira is praising his class for the fact that almost everyone got 
an "A" on their last paper. The "almost" part is the key. We 
meet two of the students who didn't get "A"s - Tweedle Dumb and 
Tweedle Dumber. They are brothers. They wrote exactly the same 
paper entitled "Cells are Bad" with exactly one paragraph that 
starts out: "My uncle lives in a cell..." and they wonder why 
they didn't get "A"s. Don't laugh. I'm sure my mother has had 
several students exactly like this...

Now we meet Harry Block (Orlando). A Geology professor/Women's 
Volleyball coach at the same community college. He is also a 
member of the United States Geological Survey ("Signed up over 
the Internet!"). So he is called about the meteor strike and he 
takes Ira with him to investigate/collect samples. 

When they reach the site, they find that the meteor crashed 
into a dessert cave. It also bleeds and has "stuff" growing on 
it. 

They take their samples back to the college where Ira runs the 
standard tests. From the looks of it, Ira is basically doing 
Harry's job as a USGS representative, which is just as well. 
Yes, Harry is a scientist, but he is a *geologist*. And since 
we know this is not an ordinary rock, it is a little outside of 
his expertise. The line between the two forms of science is 
indicated when Harry asks, "how many cells do single-celled 
organisms have?"

When Ira looks at the "blood" under a microscope, we see a lot 
of very bizarre-looking organisms dividing like crazy. I'll 
skip over some of the analysis stuff here and get to the part 
where Ira states what we already know: the organisms are alien.

Here's where X-Files fans can get a little bit of an 
unintentional joke. When Harry suggests getting the Government 
involved, Ira says "No Government! I know those people!" This 
is later explained, but it's an interesting coincidence. 

Of course, do we really believe that the Government is going to 
stay out of this? Don't be stupid. This is when we are finally 
introduced to Dr. Allison Reed (Julianne), the Deputy Director 
of the CDC, who immediately trips and falls flat on her face. 
Ira and Harry use this opportunity to get a good look at her 
underwear. We are also introduced to an Army general who knows 
Ira ("he used to work for me"). 

There are two moments in this scene that I could have lived 
without seeing. The first is when the general starts talking 
about protocol (which includes Ira and Harry being banned from 
investigating the meteor any further), prompting Ira to grab 
his crotch and say "Yeah, I got some protocol for you right 
here! Come and get it!" The second is when Harry and Ira get 
back in the jeep and Ira stands up, turns around, pulls down 
his pants and moons the general. No matter how I feel about 
David Duchovny, this was more than I ever wanted to know about 
him. 

Ira and Harry take the issue to court where the general insists 
on Ira being put on the stand in an attempt to discredit his 
scientific ability. Ira is questioned by Allison, who keeps 
smiling and batting her eyelashes at him. But even though Ira 
seems to be flirting back, he claims complete ignorance and 
refers to her as a "menace".

Ira and Harry sneak their way back into the cave - which, after 
only three weeks has grown into a rainforest and is now being 
monitored by video cameras and, apparently, boom mikes. Meaning 
that Allison can clearly hear them when they call her a 
"humorless ice queen in need of a good humping". 

Speaking of clichés... At this point, the creatures evolving 
from the meteor "blood" begin terrorizing the nearby area. You 
didn't think they would be content to just *stay* down in the 
cave, did you? One of these terrors looks like a baby Jabba the 
Hut...only it's cute. The woman that finds it - who is 
obviously not very gifted in the area of intelligence - asks 
her friend, "When did you get a dog?" The "dog" looks up at her 
with big, sad, watery eyes, prompting her to attempt petting 
it. And if you've been paying attention, you know what happens 
next.

And while I'm on the subject of clichés and other plot points 
you can see coming from a mile away, let me warn you that I 
will be giving away the ending of the movie in this review. Not 
that it will come as a shock to even the most careful of 
spoiler virgins... I mean, what do you expect? The entire human 
race to die violently in a large ball of flame? It's a *comedy* 
for crying out loud! Okay, back to the movie...

The next step in the evolutionary scale is apparently 
dinosaurs. But at some point during all of the above action, we 
are told that the aliens need their own environment to survive. 
They cannot breathe oxygen. So what Ira, Harry and Wayne (who 
joined them at some point for reasons that are not quite clear) 
find is a virtual sea of dead Pterydachtals in a valley. One of 
these monsters - still on its last breaths - gives birth while 
the group watches via a method that Wayne describes as 
"[coughing up] a big lugee". This alien, is oxygen tolerant. It 
promptly flies to the nearest shopping mall and takes a young 
woman hostage.

So the three stooges follow it. All I can say is that I don't 
know how reassured I would be to see these three running around 
a shopping mall with rifles. 

Somehow they manage to lose the alien. I know, you'd think that 
would be impossible right? Wayne attempts to solve this problem 
by picking up a microphone from a display and making bird 
calls. When Harry tells him to knock it off ("I think we've 
established that caw-caw caw-caw and tookie tookie don't 
work...") he starts singing "You Are So Beautiful". Ira - who 
is stationed on a second floor walkway - which apparently makes 
him better able to see a giant bird charging down the main 
hall - seems shocked when this works to bring the alien out of 
hiding, but he is the only one.

Unfortunately, the bird returns, sans the girl, knocks Ira 
from the walkway, sends Wayne flying about 200 feet across the 
lobby with a giant swipe of his wing, grabs Harry and flies 
off. 

Now that I have your attention...

Of course, in actuality, they kill the alien in a team effort 
and then stand around it and act macho. They continue to act 
macho all the way back to the facilities now built around the 
original cave where they interrupt a meeting between the 
governor (played by Dan Akroyd), the general and Allison, who 
is starting to realize that the general is, in fact, an 
asshole.

The ensuing argument is interrupted by the guy monitoring the 
video surveillance, who announces that there is a very large, 
very ugly blue gorilla destroying all their cameras. Then we 
hear the elevator that goes down into the cave start up. By the 
time it reaches the top, there are at least a dozen men in army 
fatigues aiming rifles at it. And, of course, what do you 
suppose the elevator doors open to reveal? That's right...
nothing. 

The following scene is not in the least bit shocking, but it's 
still fun to watch. The same could be said of this movie as a 
whole, but I'll get to that later.

The lights go out. And while everybody is still staring at the 
elevator, the big, scary monkeys come up from - where else? - 
*behind* them, flying about 20 feet into the air, one of them 
landing on the governor. Ira, apparently still in "macho" mode, 
tries to punch the monkey and nearly breaks his hand. The 
monkey releases the governor to attack Ira. Harry responds by 
whacking it with...something. The monkey drops Ira to attack 
Harry. Basically, the monkey is totally confused. Ironically, 
the dumbest of the three men - Wayne - is the only one who 
thinks of picking up a gun and *shooting* the dang thing! 

During all of this, Allison stands on the sidelines and shouts 
"useful" comments like "somebody do something!"

By this point, it is established that the aliens will have 
taken over Arizona within one week and the entire United States 
in about two months. It is never said whether or not they would 
then migrate to the rest of the world because apparently this 
is not as important as the United States. Did I mention that 
my mother is also from Europe?

Ira, Harry, Wayne, and Allison (who has suddenly decided to 
join the group) return to the college to develop a plan of 
attack. Or just sit around and wallow in misery. Whichever 
comes first. 

At this point in disaster/alien invasion movies, the humans 
(as represented by the main cast, some of the minor cast and a 
small crowd of extras) either a) give up and accept that they 
are all going to die soon (sometimes even electing to speed up 
the process) or b) go crazy. So it's not entirely shocking when 
Ira starts talking to the petrie dish containing the original 
sample taken from the meteor and Harry decides to take up  
smoking.

Of course, this is the point when a revelation occurs, right? 
The heroes brainstorm a genius plan to destroy the aliens, 
right? Well, no...actually Harry throws a match into the petrie 
dish and the sample starts climbing the wall like an overactive 
vine. This makes the general's plan of dropping a couple tons 
of napalm on the aliens suddenly seem like a bad idea...

So everybody goes back to moping. Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle 
Dumber (remember them?) re-enter the movie. While they hand out 
beer (since getting drunk is the best way to deal with imminent 
death) Ira, who has been staring at Allison's shirt for the 
last few seconds, suddenly gets an idea.

I'll wait a moment while you pull your mind back up out of the 
gutter...

There is a periodic table of elements on the back of Allison's 
shirt. (I don't know why... Is this supposed to be fashionable?) 
When Allison refuses his offer of "take your shirt off and I'll 
show you", he explains that he has noticed a pattern. Yatta 
yatta blah blah, he concludes that the best way to kill the 
aliens is to spray them with Selenium. The dimbulb brothers 
then tell them that they should use Head and Shoulders shampoo 
because "it's active ingredient is Selenium Sulfide." 

Cut to Ira. Eyes bugging out. Jaw scraping the ground. They 
have intelligence!

And even though I said I would be giving away the climax of the 
movie in this review, I will spare you the details from here on 
out.

Ira, Harry, Wayne, Allison and the Hardy Boys fill the water 
tank of Wayne's borrowed firetruck with the shampoo and make 
another trip out to the cave. The idiot general decides - hey, 
why not - to drop the napalm ahead of schedule, smoking our 
heroes out. Sure enough, the whole alien species coalesces into 
something that resembles a giant octopus on steroids. 

Cut to general and governor. The general giving obvious 
commands to his men ("fall back!"), when the governor demands 
to know exactly what went wrong and what the hell is that fire 
truck doing out there?

To summarize, our heroes drive underneath the alien, stopping 
below a giant hole in it's underside that expels a large gust 
of air to announce exactly which end of the digestive system it 
is attached to. Then, as the governor so eloquently puts it, 
they "administer a jumbo enema" and drive away seconds before 
the octopus explodes in a shower of some sort of goo that looks 
suspiciously like silly string.

And, of course, as soon as the danger has passed, Ira and 
Allison celebrate the alien's demise by playing tonsil hockey. 

I apologize if this review gives the impression that I didn't 
like this movie. I did. It was a fun little piece of fluff. I 
am merely pointing out that it was - as many movies are - 
predictable. But that doesn't make it any less enjoyable to 
watch.

Although it did end with what may be the most shameless plug I 
have ever seen in a movie...

~Diandra Hollman