# Battlefield Earth (2000)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

In order to enjoy "Battlefield Earth," you don't necessarily have to be the kind of person who speaks L. Ron Hubbard's name in hushed tones and consults "Dianetics" every day. You need only be the kind of person who'll willingly cough up your money to see a thoroughly confused, exceptionally stupid action movie featuring a box office name -- John Travolta, in case you hadn't heard -- who seems to be doing his best to quickly destroy whatever clout he has with his audience. This is his pet project, a $75 million sci-fi spectacle that finds him wobbling around in the highest platform shoes since Elton John played the Pinball Wizard in "Tommy" and sporting bizarre dreadlocks that make him look like a cast-off from a reggae band. It's the oddest vanity production imaginable, one in which the main attraction is nearly impossible to recognize.

But Travolta's hammy performance and sorry fashion sense are the least of the movie's worries. Seemingly there wasn't enough even in that lavish budget to buy a few decent special effects or to hire screenwriters who could make a coherent story out of Hubbard's doorstop-sized novel. Matters are not helped by director Roger Christian's insistence on shooting almost every scene with a headache-inducing tilted camera and employing slow-motion and echoing dialogue, the telling signs of a hack filmmaker.

Set in the year 3000, "Earth" predicts a world in which humans are hunted down and enslaved by sinister alien Psychlos, who have ravaged our planet and forced the few unlucky survivors to hide out in caves, where they dress in pelts and buckskin, wear wispy little braids and murmur about the "demons" who haunt the "forbidden land."

As a rule, science-fiction demands a leap of faith, but "Battlefield Earth" is so patently absurd only the dimmest audience members will be able to put up with it. For example, the Psychlos, of which nine-foot-tall Terl (Travolta) is the leader, spend much of their time bragging about their superior intellect, yet they're dumb enough to plop what looks like an overgrown jellyfish on top of their "man-animal" prisoner Jonnie Goodboy (Barry Pepper, who goes through the entire movie slack-jawed and wide-eyed) and zap all their secrets into his primitive brain. Jonnie then goes on to rally his fellow cave-dwellers to revolt against the giants by stealing Harrier jets and attacking the Psychlos' domed city.

Yes, you read correctly: We are treated to the sight of spear-rattling cavemen jumping into high-tech fighter planes. Even the infamously tacky filmmaker Ed Wood Jr. never thought of that one.

Also, despite the fact that the action takes place 1,000 years from now, somehow such 20th-century relics as Putt-Putt golf courses, parking ramps and mannequins have managed to remain intact. Ditto the books in the Library of Congress, where Jonnie stops by for a crash course on human rights.

Then, when the humans are forced to mine gold in the Colorado hills, Terl issues a stern warning that he'll be watching them. Obviously not very closely, since Jonnie and his crew manage to steal an aircraft and fly all the way to Fort Knox and back without a hitch.

We're expected to root for the man-animals to take back control of the Earth from these extraterrestrial invaders, but there's not a single interesting character among the bunch. At least the Psychlos have some personality: Travolta and his sidekick Forrest Whitaker snipe at each other like they're auditioning for the sci-fi remake of "The Birdcage."

About halfway through the film's interminable two hours, you're bound to grow nostalgic for such other ill-advised star vehicles as Kevin Costner's "The Postman" and Bruce Willis' "Hudson Hawk." Even those clunkers were far easier to sit through than this.

To add a bit of extra campiness to his performance, Travolta punctuates every third line with a booming theatrical chuckle. Let's see who's laughing after his fans find out just how abysmal "Battlefield Earth" truly is. James Sanford

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