Movin’ Pictures: District 9

I hate to break the news to all the Sara Suburbs or little Johnny Culdesacs out there, but poor people are as ubiquitous in the world as the Miley Cyrus posters are in your bedroom. I think every continent has some sort of good movie that represents the hardships of its ghetto dwellers; you have your City of God's, your Slumdog Millionaire’s, your Kangaroo Jack’s, etc. The only continent left just happens to be the most colossally fucked one ever (including Pangaea).

Making a slum movie about Africa should not be hard since, oh, I don’t know…it’s AFRICA. It had that whole “colonialism” thing. Also that little apartheid thing, whatever the heck-a-roonie that was. There’s also the abject poverty, the AIDS, the Super AIDS, ebola, gun-touting militias, military dictatorships, and just the overall haze of suck that kind of hangs over the land. Africa has a billion people living in what is essentially the world’s largest ghetto. Film that.

Man, the only thing that place is missing are aliens. If only Africa had some aliens, then and only then could we make a kick-ass ghetto film.

District 9, like this review of it, leaves the audience asking, “what the fuck are they trying to say?”

Check this out, I’m not making this up. Here are two quick reviews I read on RottenTomatoes. Both are positive.

“A brilliant social commentary.” – Victoria Alexander, FilmsInReview.com
“[District 9] signifies nothing.” – Tim Brayton, Antagony & Ecstacy

I have no fucking clue what I just watched. So, there are hyper-intelligent aliens with advanced technology, and for some unexplained reason they turn dim and chill out over South Africa. The government collects them all, puts them in a slum, and then normal slum-like problems occur (gangs, black market). It’s like a fucking, normal slum movie except all the poor, stupid people are really poor, really stupid and they look like Shrimp Men.

I know this was supposed to be a sci-fi horror comedy satire. I don’t care that some professional movie critics are comparing it to Planet of the Apes. District 9 was objectively retarded. It was a bore that didn’t have to be so goddamn boring.

Without giving too much plot away, I’m just going to say I hated the protagonist. Wikus van de Merwe (Copley) is almost as unintelligible as the fucking non-English-speaking aliens. He has some sort of jumbled South African dialect that makes him sound Welsh. I did like watching him argue with the alien protagonist, Christopher Johnson (hahaha). Hearing those two go back and forth reminded me of the cantina scene in Star Wars.

Movies need to stop being shot with the shaky cam. It was fine for the first 20 minutes where it was supposed to feel like a documentary. That actually makes sense when the plot involves a whole film crew tagging along with military operations. But when you’re watching something that only the audience is supposed to know about and the footage is still at home movie quality, you’re left feeling confused and motion sick.

I’m not going to lie. There were some pretty funny parts, like the human-alien bareback humping or when a Gundam mech suit hits a pig into a soldier and they all die. So, yeah. The film is not a complete loss. Mindless fun, I guess.

If you want to see a deep movie about life in a ghetto, rent Fiddler on the Roof. If you want a deep, sci-fi flick, rent Planet of the Apes. If you want to watch campy aliens tear ass on humans or vice versa, rent Starship Troopers. Don’t combine them into one, big, mediocre fart.

I give District 9 5/10 corgis. Meh.