Alien Opponent

From the Chiller network comes Alien Opponent! The movie's loose plot follows a bunch of bumpkins and wackos as they attempt to earn the 100,000 dollar bounty that the junk yard owner is offering for the elimination of the alien who just crash landed in the middle of all the junk.

But if you're watching a movie called Alien Opponent, plot isn't one of your biggest concerns. So step one to having a great time: Turn off your brain! That being said, this movie is good, trashy fun. The blood, at least in the uncut DVD, is plentiful and the body count is through the roof. The movie seems to take an approach toward the value of human life that is, well, non-existent. It has the comedy of a Troma film without going so over the top. The characters are colorful and the pace is fluid.

The only recognizable faces present are Jeremy London (Mallrats) and Roddy Piper. Now, this movie is worth watching just to see Piper in action again as the tough-as-nails priest. Everyone else is relatively new but most perform admirably.

This low-budget gem will never win any awards or show up on your top-ten any time soon but I'll be honest with you: I was never bored, I had no idea what would happen next, and I had fun. When all is said and done, what else do you want?

Sometimes I just need to relax with an hour and a half of silliness. When I'm lucky, and that's not often at all, I stumble upon a perfect piece, like this Alien Opponent.

The plot has an obvious potential for being funny, wacky, entertaining. The film is all of this. Surprisingly, there is even a proper script, complete with imagination and attention to detail. It's silly but not stupid. The main flaw is bad acting, which forced me to reduce my note from a good to an average movie. Too many characters are portrayed by amateurs. On the other hand, some actors enjoyed themselves while being filmed, and this obvious pleasure contaminates the audience. Personally, I did enjoy the whole show and will watch it again.

As a side note, I don't enjoy gore at all, so I was glad that Alien Opponent contains very little of it, nothing that bothered me.

I have to say I'm honestly surprised the current average mark for this excellent movie is so low, and probably some reviews are so negative.

In a way it's understandable actually, because if many people expected it to be a mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster with a tight plot, dialogs with depth (real or clichéd) and an all-star cast (independence day, Armageddon etc), well then, this movie would definitely be a disappointment.

Well, some people might have been looking for those rare gems, movies with style and a great story but for whatever reason ignored by the establishment (Cube, Cypher, Donnie Darko when it went straight to video because of 9/11 and an airplane crash, despite being one of the best movies ever made).... and again they were in for a disappointment.

So, you might think, why does this lunatic gave it an 8 then? That's actually quite simple, this is a B-movie, shamelessly so, and as such it succeeds in its intent and entertains to no end.

From the very opening, a quiet evening in rednecks-ville with booze, guns and alien ships crashing behind the barn, we're immediately reminded of classic B-movies such as Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Wild Zero, or maybe the pulp fiction that inspired many Tarantino movies. However, while Tarantino tries to invest his silly, gory movies with a serious background that rarely fits, Alien Opponent is a tongue-in-cheek gore fest that entertains us with action, blood, corny dialogs and bizarre deaths all extremely funny.

The movie, as long as a silly, gory B-movie suits your tastes, flashes by in an instant, never boring and always enjoyable. For a bit of mindless fun and gratuitous, silly violence, this movie is a real gem, and in my opinion much more fun than pretentious Hollywood efforts like the recent Sherlock Holmes movie, check it out.

PS I recently watched it again and I had to change the score to a ten. Stupid movie, yes, but really funny. I still think many people just don't get that it's meant to be cheesy and silly. That's what great B-movies are.

If you're reading this far, it probably means you're hoping to make sense of the title of this review. So let me explain: This movie is fairly low budget, has cheesy clichés everywhere, relatively poor special effects, and generic acting and simplistic dialogue that adheres very strictly to the cookie-cutter character types that populate the script.

Don't get me wrong, all of that is what actually what makes this film GOOD.

Aside from acting, production value, and good special effects, a good movie is made from two other very vital ingredients: cohesion and honesty.

When the director(s) and creators of a movie understand exactly what it is they are trying to convey, and then they creatively use all of the tools in their bag to clearly convey it, the result is a movie with good cohesion. It makes sense, it allows you to follow the story easily, and wraps you into the story.

What do I mean by honesty? I mean that some movies try very hard to be more than what they are, and it often comes off as weak and even a little pretentious.

Alien Opponent puts forth no pretenses. It knows exactly what it wants to be: a fun hillbilly lovin' action/sci-fi comedy.

My only real complaint is that the action sort of dries up towards the end, making things a little slower. They could have used even more characters on the battlefield.

I enjoyed this movie.

I know what you're thinking. "Look at this a#%hole. He gave it a ten. Probably a relative of somebody in the crew, or some local who was cast as an extra". And I perfectly understand. IMDb is bursting at the seems with ÜBER-overwhelming reviews from cast, crew, extras and even producers in "disguise". You know the drill - "honest" opinions in all "objectivity" to increase the ratings.

But the answer is no. I have nothing to do with the making of this film...AT ALL! I simply loved this little gem - and gave it a ten for being "the little film that could".

The story is paper thin, the budget ultra low and the actors are light years away from even being in the vicinity of "mediocre". But still - these guys seem to really know what they're doing. The sound - both mix and editing - PRISTINE. Cinematography and film editing - FLAWLESS! The special effects - CGI, robotics and latex - EXCELLENT! To sum it up - the technical side is, surprisingly enough, grade A. How they pulled it off is beyond me.

What IS certain - the team behind this film LOVES making movies. Call me crazy (as you think I am anyway), but it seems that somebody actually cared and took pride in finishing this little project at the highest level possible with the means that were available. There's a "let's use the few dollars we have to make something really cool"-attitude here. You'll see what I mean, if you ever decide to rent this flick (and throw away your hard earned money). It's all in the details.

As for the story (paper thin...remember?), the creators elaborately underline from frame one that this is not to be taken seriously. Under ANY circumstance. This is MEANT to be over the top. Just sit back, enjoy the ride and the "what the f#%k???"-moments, which are plentiful.

This is probably the best 80 minutes I'll never get back. For sure.