Review // DISTRICT 9 - Apparently genre movies have left the ghetto.

I simply don't get this movie, or I should say, I don't get the nerd-fervor surrounding it. Have our expectations for genre entertainment been so eroded over the last 20 years that we're now starving to throw around words like "genius" and "visionary"?

It seems like everywhere I turn these days I'm witnessing the births of visionaries. Like when the trailer for The Watchmen proclaimed Zack Snyder a visionary, I felt like I might've walked through a time blip and missed the 5-6 amazing films that he made to warrant such a title. How is Snyder a visionary exactly? Because he has the uncanny ability to envision other peoples creative work as films? Ok, I'll leave my Zach Snyder rant for later.

Anyway, along comes Neil Blomkamp with his first feature, and once again nerds have assembled to prematurely crown a new king. One more film and he'll surely be able to breathe the rarefied air of directors who sit unbalanced beneath a heavy crown of unwarranted praise (Darren Aronofsky, PT Anderson, David Fincher).

Here's the thing, I don't think District 9 is necessarily a bad movie, I just don't think its deserving of giddy superlatives. Nothing pisses me off more than arriving at a movie a few months after release and already being told that its a masterwork. So it was not District 9's fault that I didn't exactly fall head over heels in love with it. I don't like to be told what to think and unfortunately for this moderately entertaining movie, I was told that my nerd soul was about to be saved.

Of course, District 9 could not and did not live up to these hopelessly high expectations. Worse than simply not fitting the suit of hype it came dressed in, I actually found quite a few problems with the movie that seemed impossible to overlook. It left me wondering why most had.

For starters there is the uneven tone of the film, shifting from faux-newsreel to mockumentary and then finally to a traditional narrative structure as soon as each style ceases to serve Blomkamp's story. The newsreel gives you the exposition and world-building notes without Blomkamp having to employ narrative finesse or worry about subtleties. The mockumentary provides a cutesy gimmick for introducing main character Wikus, a company man enforcing the country's institutionalized racism on the alien residents of District 9. And finally the traditional straight-ahead approach allows Blomkamp to hurdle over the previously imposed limitations and take his main character anywhere he pleases. When Wikus begins undergoing a painful metamorphasis and escapes his captors to hide amongst the ruins of District 9, surely the documentary crew wouldn't continue to follow him, right? No, and this is the only reason why the mocumentary style is abandoned - it no longer works. So why employ it in the first place? I don't know, and I don't think Blomkamp knows either.

Which leads me to my next and perhaps biggest complaint about the movie, the abrupt transformations that drive the film forward and the mixed messages that are left behind as a result. When District 9 introduces us to the aliens, they are disgusting, savage, violent and without dignity. Considering they seem to be standing in for the ghettoized blacks of the real Johannosburg, this portrayal is more than a little unsettling. That is until the film reveals the literal ghettoized black populace of District 9 and they seem far uglier, far more savage and violent, and the unsettling feeling settles right in.

I've heard that a lot of white South Africans have a decidedly un-PC attitude toward their black neighbors. District 9 seems to confirm this. I thought, surely this baiting portrait of both the aliens and the black populace is somehow deepened as the film goes, revealing itself to be merely an imitation of the racist climate depicted in the film. Surely this will give way to a more nuanced and balanced view, right? But, it doesn't. The aliens, with the exception of a father-son duo, remain ugly and savage and so too the black characters, although they aren't really characters, more of a faceless, seething mob of id.

As Wikus himself transforms into one of the aliens, his attitude abruptly shifts from one of casual disgust to empathy, over the course of what feels like a single scene. But what is he transforming from? An ugly human into a misunderstood alien or a misunderstood human into an ugly alien. I couldn't tell.

Sharlto Copley gives a manic, energetic performance as both the chipper, milquetoast racist and the desperate fugitive mutant, but Wikus isn't a character that I felt in any way connected to. I wasn't invested in his plight or his transformation, specifically because he begins from such and unsavory place and ends up in an entirely predictable one, without ever feeling like his emotional transformation is earned.

I'm pretty sure I would have forgiven all of these failings if the movie truly was as original and imaginative as its supporters claim. But it isn't. It's fairly entertaining, it has some o-kay action sequences, a bunch of stuff cribbed from video games, and that's about it. There would be nothing overly disappointing about this if the film wasn't already built up to be a spectacle, an event in genre filmmaking.

The bottom line is that I don't think District 9 is a terrible film, just like I don't think say Red Planet or Reign of Fire or Minority Report are terrible films. But I don't think they're amazing either. The problem I have with critics and fans throwing around big praise for Blomkamp right out of the gate, is that it suggests that he has no room for improvement, that there is no apex for him to strive for, having arrived at his artistic destination immediately. Like, after getting out of bed. I think this kind of over-hyping is not Blomkamps fault or his responsibility, but I think it short-changes him and audiences.

I think, I hope, there are better movies in Neil Blomkamp and that District 9 is not his definitive statement.

Besides, I've seen this movie before, complete with the alien-feline-food thingy, its called Alien Nation.