The Advanced Guard

I caught this movie on the Sci-Fi channel, and was pleasantly surprised. It is somewhat formulaic, but if you are a fan of Sci-Fi in general, you may enjoy it. I felt that the cast acted quite well, and the special effects were quite well done for the obviously low budget. All and all, I'm glad I watched it.

I didn't realise this was a "made for TV movie" when I rented the DVD. Even by that standard this movie is very tedious and cliched. Not to be recommended. I didn't understand the significance of the naked female that appears a couple of times at the beginning of the movie. Well, perhaps I do now.

This thing was bad. Really bad. I mean, low budget can sometimes be very inspiring, but not this. The story was so off-the-shelf, the alien's behaviour so illogical, the characters so clichéed. I found nothing good in it. And I did try.

This is a very enjoyable TV movie. Yes, it is a low-budget film. But the writing is strong and the sets are done well. What is nice about the human characters in this movie is that they all act like real people. Each one has moments of anger and fear, but each also show strong, decent, heroic sides. There aren't any "weakling" or selfish jerk characters. The ending is no surprise, but getting there is what counts. And this nice little film delivers the goods.

Yes, it was a bad sci-fi flick. Yes, it had plenty of bad acting. However, what you might miss is a good representation of the typical uncaring alien (Bravo.. yes, that's his name) and the science-minded alien (Harper). They both do a good job and it's actually funny to watch them. I had little to no empathy for the human victims, in fact watching Bravo get his licks in when the humans got out of line was all too funny. Plus, if you watch the DvD, you can see the three short scenes of some blonde naked woman enjoying her body as if she was an alien who just started inhabiting it (Yeah, well, it helped when the movie started getting slow). Overall just a fun campy movie to watch if you're looking to see something you don't have to pay too much attention to or you want a laugh (or both!).