THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 8, 1995 TAG: 9507080077
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: By MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
``SPECIES'' WOULD be the perfect drive-in movie, if only we still had drive-ins.
As it is, the film is good fun for those who like B-budget, ultra-silly, cornball flicks that foresee no less than the end of the earth.
The plot lays it on thick. A radio telescope in the Puerto Rican jungle picks up DNA information about a species from outer space. With the assurance that our planet is so distant that visitation is unlikely, a team of scientists, headed by Gandhi (actually, Ben Kingsley) decide to create the alien on earth. It is a bad decision.
They choose to make the alien a female because ``it will be more docile and non-aggressive.'' To this, one of the younger scientists quips, ``you guys don't get out much, do you?''
When the creature, Sil, reaches age 12, the scientists decide to eliminate her. She escapes from the desert laboratory and makes her way to Los Angeles in search of a mate.
Sil is played by the luscious blond/blue-eyed model Natasha Henstridge. But when Sil doesn't get what she wants, she spouts horns from her back and becomes a gooey mess designed by Swiss painter H. R. Giger (the same mad guy who created the ``Alien'' monsters).
Of course, there is a group of concerned scientists out to stop her. Kingsley, in an apparent all-out effort to get employment beyond serious flicks, even mans a tommy gun at one point. Included in the carefully balanced team is the nerdish Alfred Molina (one of the finest character actors in the business via ``The Perez Family'' and ``Prick Up Your Ears''), Marg Helgenberger (of TV's ``China Beach'') and Michael Madsen.
The silliest of the bunch is poor Forest Whitaker, in a role as some kind of clairvoyant who can always predict where the monster will go next. His powers are never quite explained, leaving him to constantly repeat the line: ``She went that way.'' It moves the plot along, but it really doesn't give the monster a chance.
The monster is hardly scary, as Giger's ``Alien'' creations have been so often copied that we no longer have the newness of shock. If you're in the mood, though, for old-time movie hokum, you might get into the spirit of this. You might even imagine that you're at the drive-in seeing ``Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.'' This film's budget is larger, but the goofy threats remain the same. Sil is a creation of our own species - reminding us yet again that we bring many disasters upon ourselves. MEMO: Mal's rating: two and a half stars
ILLUSTRATION: Color photos from MGM
by CNB