May 11–18, 2000

movie shorts

Battlefield Earth

It’s hard to say which is the most embarrassing moment in John Travolta’s longtime dream movie of L. Ron Hubbard’s 1982 novel. But one of the frontrunners must be when the evil alien Terl (Travolta) is seduced by a woman-alien (Mrs. Travolta, Kelly Preston) with an exceptionally agile three-foot tongue. His real passion, though, is capital. The Psychlos are consummate money-lusters, so bent on their get-rich schemes that — and this is the movie’s ultimate ridiculousness — they teach their human slaves their language and how to run all the machines and weapons in order to reap greater illegal profits. (Such arrogance, of course, comes back to bite them.) The film’s raced dynamic is worth noting: The aliens are tall, dreadlocked, green-eyed monsters (think Predator meets Jabba the Hutt) and the earthlings ("rat-brains" and "man-animals" to Terl, who spends much time tormenting his minion Forest Whitaker) are irrepressible rebels, led by Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (Barry Pepper, affecting a worked-out Kid Rock look), who is so good that he never needs to shave. The alien-earthling battle of, um, wits, is all about "leverage," based on who knows what about whom (this resonates uncomfortably with rumors that the Scientologists have kept their celebrities in check with tapes confirming closeted activities), but the plot turns so convoluted — and lifted from T2, ID4 and the Star Wars franchise — that it’s hard to care whose leverage is bigger.

—Cindy Fuchs