Guilty Pleasures – Evolution

If there’s one film that is perfect already, that will never, ever need a remake or a reboot., it’s Ghostbusters. I’m not delusional though. I know that eventually, that it will get remade with sexy young actors, oodles of special effects and a few references to the original.

In fact, it already was remade, but instead of fighting ghosts with proton streams, it was aliens taken out with hair care products. And dammit, I still dig Evolution for doing just that.

When a meteorite falls to Earth two college professors, Dr. Ira Kane and Prof. Harry Phineas Block, are assigned the job of checking the site out. At the site, they discover organisms not of this planet. Soon the site is taken over by the government, forcing Ira and Harry to the side. As the new life-forms begin to evolve and start to get more and more dangerous, it’s up to the two professors to save the planet.

Let’s get this out of the way. Evolution is not a perfect film. It shares a few similarities with Ghostbusters thanks to the Ivan Reitman direction, and features a few characters so one-dimensional, that they’re a mere stereotype away from collapsing all of time and space into a black hole of tropes.

But hot damn, at least the actors run with it. Orlando Jones may be filling out the role of overly-sexed sassy black man in this movie, but at least he’s clearly having fun with it, while Sean William Scott is dumb enough to make social workers do some research to find out if his parents happen to also be his cousins.

David Duchovony as usual is on fine form in a reserved role that he still makes fun, while Julianne Moore is actually charming as a clutzy scientist. It’s one thing ti know that you’re in a substandard movie, but when you have a cast that still brings their A game to the set, that can actually be a saving grace. And then you’ve got those creature effects. Man, they are crazy and live up to their out of this world scenario, evolving from sad-faced kilelr toad-puppies to anal-breaching mosquitoes from hell.

And of course, the best ever use of Wild Cherry music in a movie. Ever!

At the end, things did get of out of hand, as a gang of heroes rode off to do battle with a giant piece of playdough that could only be killed with Head and Shoulders shampoo. It was utterly ridiculous, and involved a chocolate starfish that would have sold a million Limp Bizkit albums back then.

But Evolution was still impressive at a time when CGI was really taking off, and despite being flawed, fun to watch.

Last Updated: March 20, 2013