Review: District 9

If I've talked to you at all in the past 5 days, chances are I've gushed about the movie District 9. Steve practically dragged me to see it on Tuesday, but it was not at all what I was expecting!  Specifically, I was expecting something loud and plotless with comic book/fantasy leanings.  Instead, I was overjoyed to find an intelligent, engaging science fiction movie.  Sure there's an abundance of computer-generated fight scenes (it is a Peter Jackson film, after all) but this movie is REALLY good, and all the digital explosions serve only to enhance the story.

With a few notable exceptions (e.g. ET, Contact), movies about aliens nearly always assume that they would be hostile in some way toward humans.  But what if we were hostile toward them?  It seems like a natural enough question, but one that has until now been rarely (if ever?) addressed at the movies.  In District 9, an alien craft becomes marooned over Johannesburg, South Africa.  Its inhabitants are weak, malnourished, and clearly in need of assistance.  The authorities respond by partitioning them off to a section of the city called District 9, which fast becomes the worst sort of slum.   The aliens are treated with varying degrees of disrespect by all ethnic groups in Johannesburg - a city already famous for its racial divides.  We (humans) irresponsibly dispose of them by  performing lab tests, label them "Prawns" because, well, they look like prawns, and exploit their addiction to cat food.  The best part of District 9 just might be how "human" the filmmakers allow the Prawns to seem.  I'm not usually one to pay a whole lot of attention to the subtleties of computer animation (because I know next to nothing about it), but I can't help but think that a lot of the sympathy the audience is led to feel for the Prawns is due to these effects.  Their expressions and movements are brilliantly presented, and the movie wouldn't be the same without them.

The story itself centres around a man named Wikus, who is employed by the governing body assigned to deal with alien affairs, and Christopher Johnson, the apparent leader of the Prawns.  I won't get in to the details of the plot because stories like this deserve to be experienced first hand - and you ALL need to go see this movie!  It is at once insightful, thrilling, and amusing (not in a laugh-out-loud-ha-ha way, but when you see it you'll know what I mean).