District 9

(*4 Stars*) The science-fiction film District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson, is not a movie for the faint of heart (as my girlfriend and step mom can attest to, with particularly graphic scenes rendering my girlfriend’s face to my armpit as if she really fancied my deodorant selection, while my step mom two seats over appeared to be reading an imaginary book in her hands with the precision my grandpa does when he has misplaced his glasses). But if one can manage to see beyond the violence, he or she will have the pleasure of sitting back and marveling at the best, and most creative, movie of the summer.

The film begins in the late 20th century, where an alien spaceship that is similar to but lacks the disco ball appearance of the mother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, stalls directly above the most unlikely of places, Johannesburg, South Africa. Reports presume the lost ship became stranded after a command module separated from the ship and disappeared somewhere in the city (however, my GPS the other day had me driving in the San Francisco Bay, so I understand that it is not always that easy to get home). A team of humans breach the interior of the vessel to discover a massive group of malnourished and leaderless criket-esque aliens (commonly referred to as “prawns”, and whose physique looks more or less like a combination of Wilt Chamberlain and Mahatma Gandhi with faces obscured by tentacle-like features or as if someone tried to suck an entire package of spaghetti in one eating). The aliens are removed from their ship and are confined to a government camp inside Johannesburg called District 9, which is like an alien version of Boyz in the Hood. Decades later, a private military contractor is placed in charge of policing and relocating the alien population to a new Porta Potty-like camp outside of Johannesburg called District 10.

The movie gets interesting when Wikus van de Merwe (played terrifically by Sharlto Copley), a bureaucrat who gives you as much confidence as Steve Urkel wielding a machine gun and saying, “Come with me if you want to live,” or my grandpa in the ring with Mike Tyson (“Forget the left hook Pa, just use the walker…don’t let him bite your hearing aid!”), is assigned the arduous task of serving eviction notices to the alien species and having them transferred to District 10. After being sprayed in the face by an alien-like substance in a canister that alters his DNA (perhaps an intergalactic prank, like an alien Whoopi-cushion?), Wikus must combine forces with the aliens to help them escape the planet and save his own humanity.

What makes this film so remarkable are not only the intense action sequences that triggered my dad in the theater to jump out of his seat and bellow out “Woo-Hoo!” as if he had an inflamed hemorrhoid on his toosh, but also the subtle insights about human nature the movie reflects in its storyline. For example, the method we process the unknown and unfamiliar--as seen through the way we give names to the aliens like “Christopher” to make them appear not as foreign to us. This lack of comprehension can naturally lead us to feelings of fear and anger, causing us to push the mysterious beings as far away as possible, disassociating ourselves with them completely. Now I make note of these diminutive observations not because I want you to go adopt a baby from Zimbabwe or because I want you to lose hope in humanity (which at times in the film you may feel like doing), but because although this may be a far fetched movie about strange Praying-Mantis-like creatures landing in South Africa, the film reminds us that many of the character’s responses to the aliens are not much different from our own unconscious reactions to things in our everyday lives that we fail to take the time to understand. But then again, you may just like watching people’s heads explode like water balloons, and that’s fine too. Whatever your purpose for seeing the film may be, please remember to enjoy, be aware, and most importantly…don’t forget to wear some deodorant!