Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem

How the mighty have fallen. While this movie is about as far from the original Ridley Scott Alien film as the Academy Award is to Britney Spears, it's still kind of a bummer to have the association in the back of one's mind while watching.

That aside, Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem is a reasonably tolerable monster mash of a movie. It lacks the Paul W.S. Anderson cheesiness of the 2004 AVP movie — which, quite frankly, I was hoping for — but there are enough laughable lines intercut with the chest-popping, flesh-melting, and sternum-skewering.

Our substitute Ripley is soldier/wife/mommy Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth, whom you'll recognize as Michelle from 24), who returns home from Iraq only to find her family threatened by an army of fetid alien foes.

Along for the space-style slaughter are her young, dumb and fulla-cum neighbors (brothers Dallas and Ricky, played by Steven Pasquale of Rescue Me and Johnny Lewis of The O.C., respectively), the lame local law enforcement (John Ortiz, from The Job), and government goons (Robert Joy, from C.S.I. New York). Oh, yes… the casting maestro of Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem is definitely the proud owner of a television set.

While this flick is a step up in the gore dept. — it's rated R, while Anderson's stab was only PG-13. But it had Lance Henrickson looking at a hologram of a pyramid and saying, "My experts tell me this is a pyramid." There's really no comparison — it's a free-fall in the character corner. None of the aliens or predators have one whit of personality or individualism, and the human actors might as well have been cardboard cutouts with empty thought-bubbles.

Shot with a murky eye by Daniel Pearl (Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies), and directed with four left feet by the Brothers Strause (debutants), amazingly and surely against all odds and mathematical probabilities, Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem still somehow manages to be something less than totally incompetent. I wasn't bored.

= = =