capsule : tired and thin attempt at genre-mixing : aliens are among us meets crime story . cliches abound . alien nation starts with one great idea and then drowns it in an ocean of stupidity . it starts off with a none-too-thinly disguised allegory about -- literally -- legal and illegal aliens . a spaceship comes to earth , holding 100 , 000 roughly humanoid aliens who have been created by some other species for hard labor . they're intelligent and gifted , and they slowly get absorbed into amercan society ( i'm assuming american society , but the movie focuses on socal ) . all of this has great promise , and the first five minutes of the movie hum with untapped possibilites . then the plot got under way , and my hopes died . why does this happen , almost without fail ? i've seen countless movies that have the germ of a good idea but not a whit of how to deploy it properly , and i'm sad to include alien nation on that list . it's not a cheap movie ; it was financed by gale anne hurd , who put her money into aliens and a number of other movies of similar ilk . just that somewhere along the line there was a terrible failure of imagination , and the whole thing turned into a tv cop show . the plot features a cop -- james caan -- and his new alien partner ( mandy patinkin ) . caan lost his last partner to an alien grocery-store robber , so of course he's hesitant . eventually , he chokes back his revulsion and decides to use the other man to get revenge , sort of . this involves getting close to another alien , played by terence stamp , who simply mixes and matches all the typical movie drug lord cliches . once we were into the usual chases and shoot-outs , i lost all interest . there were attempts to get it back -- like having the aliens get stoned on sour milk , or giving them goofy names no thanks to immigration -- but none of it elicited more than a snicker . all the problems can be traced to the script . there's nothing wrong with the movie technically -- it looks convincing enough , especially in the opening moments . but no one took a good , hard look at it and said , this isn't enough . we've all seen enough cop shows and drug-lord revenge thrillers . gussying yet another one up in the guise of sf doesn't help anyone . footnote : the strangest thing about alien nation is the tv series that was spun off from it , where they actually sat down and took the time to explore the ramifications of what they'd set up . the show's well-done and worth watching . the movie doesn't have a clue . this may be the first time the spinoff has more going for it than the source material . <a href= " mailto : <hr>syegul@cablehouse . dyn . ml . org " ><hr>syegul@cablehouse . dyn . ml . org</a> efnet irc : ginrei / icq : 934998 <a href= " http : //cablehouse . dyn . ml . org/serdar " >http : //cablehouse . dyn . ml . org/serdar</a> another worldly device . . . you can crush me as i speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth<hr> 
