Sci-fi remake a poor clone of original classic
"The Invasion"
1½ stars
out of four
Opens today
Starring As
Nicole Kidman Carol Bennell
Daniel Craig Ben
Jeremy Northam Tucker
Jackson Bond Oliver
Veronica Cartwright Wendy Lenk
Written by Dave Kajganich; based on the novel by Jack Finney. Produced by Joel Silver. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 (violence). Running time: 95 minutes.
How appropriate that this science-fiction remake uses an abbreviated title from Don Siegel's 1956 original thriller "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
Everything about "The Invasion" feels abbreviated.
The characters. The story. The thrills. The suspense. The ending. Especially the ending, a hurried, pasted-on finale in which the future of humankind gets neatly wrapped up during a single TV newscast.
German director Oliver "The Downfall" Hirschbiegel guts the creepy paranoia of Siegel's Red Scare classic and replaces it with generic sensationalism in the form of nutty car chases, animated viruses, contagious projectile vomiting and Nicole Kidman stripping down to her skivvies -- just because she can.
Kidman plays Dr. Carol Bennell, a Washington, D.C., shrink and single mom divorced from Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam), head of the Centers for Disease Control. They have a young son named Oliver (preciously played by an exuberant Jackson Bond).
When the space shuttle Patriot explodes upon entering Earth's atmosphere, scientists discover on the wreckage a benign form of cellular tissue that apparently survives heat and cold. It becomes activated by REM sleep signals.
Carol begins to notice crazy stuff, like her patient Wendy Lenk (Veronica Cartwright, a star in Philip Kaufman's 1978 "Invasion" remake) insisting that "My husband isn't my husband!"
Soon, Carol realizes that her own husband isn't her husband, either. Dispassionate, empty people on the street start staring at her. She goes into protective mom mode on a mission to snatch Oliver from his father, who has already upchucked all over Carol and infected her with the alien virus.
As long as Carol stays awake, the virus will not activate. With help from her colleague and would-be lover Ben (erstwhile 007 Daniel Craig), Carol must save her son by drinking every bottle of caffeine-chocked Mountain Dew and Pepsi in D.C.
Apparently, Red Bull didn't kick in for a product placement here.
Of the four "Invasion" movies based on Jack Finney's novel, this one belongs in last place.
New screenwriter Dave Kajganich cannily substitutes an intelligent virus for the parasitic space pods from the three previous movies. (Abel Ferrara directed 1993's "Body Snatchers.")
But Kajganich fails to prove that diversity should rightfully triumph over a conflict-free -- but emotionless -- world of uniformity offered by the collective alien mentality.
In this "Invasion," even the message gets abbreviated.