by Rob O'Hannon

Created on: August 25, 2009   Last Updated: August 26, 2009

Sigh-Fi.

The movie made absolutely no sense, and had plot holes big enough to sail the Titanic through - that is assuming the Titanic could avoid the 500,000 ton iceberg I laughingly refer to as the movie's plot.

Like others, I really wanted to like this film. From the ads it looked like you would get inside the camp, meet the aliens, learn about their relationship to man. Maybe even helping the viewer to relate their plight to the Palestinians or someone. But there was nothing to like about it. And we've seen it all before in one form or another - this was "Alien Nation" without soul meets every shoot 'me up movie or video game ever made.

I did get the attempt to portray a ghetto/shanty town environment. But that was more disturbing than effective as it, however unintentionally, appeared to equate residents of ghettos/shanty town environments to crawling insect "prawns that are less than human, and only concerned about scuttling about finding something to eat.

And did we all get how, at least one former South African feels about Nigeria, and perhaps more covertly, blacks? I will be generous and think that Neill Blomkamp was trying to use sci-fi to make a statement on apartheid. But when you look at the roles blacks play in the movie - gang lord, gang members, hookers, subservient assistants to van der Merwe, and the documentary clips of lower class members of society making prejudiced comments (In my mind perhaps an attempt to justify past prejudices by a "See? We're not the only one who are bigoted" moment) in broken English or rioting in the streets - I think you get might be getting a truer subliminal picture of what is going on in the hearts and minds of the people involved in the production of the movie, and the continued segregation of blacks in that society.

The real problem is that District 9 has no heart. It is, however, a perfect movie for boys ages 12-17 - all shooting with nothing else to make you think beyond the occasional huh? and even that got boring - once you see the aliens super weapons in action it the splattering of flesh quickly become dull. Although there was a LOL moment where someone had the bright idea (during a scene where the "bad guys" are about to corner the "good guys") of doing a crouched position traveling shot directly in front of a soldier. It made it look like weapon the soldier was carrying just got too darned heavy, and he had found got a pastry cart somewhere to rest it on so he could keep moving forward.

Every now and then

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