Saturday, February 21, 2004

Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (1994)

Starring - Donald Sutherland; Eric Thal; Julie Warner; Keith David & Will Patton Director - Stuart Orme MPAA - Rated R for violence, sci-fi gore and brief language. Donald Sutherland stars in this story of aliens trying to take over the Earth. They have landed in a small town and they are taking over the bodies of the town's folk by attaching themselves to their backs and sticking a probe into their brains. Even worse, they are rapidly spreading to the neighboring communities. So it's up to Andrew Nivens (Donald Sutherland) and his son Sam (Eric Thal) to stop them before the entire United States ends up as the puppets for these aliens. Also along for the ride for the required amount of sex appeal is Julie Warner playing a brilliant scientist who eventually falls for Sutherland's son. Even in the brief overview I gave of this movie, you may be able to glean that it is a formula film right from the opening credits. It's sad to say, but I don't think that the writers had one original thought when they wrote this movie. I can't think of a single plot point that I hadn't seen in some other movie. Anything that was even the slightest bit original was so predictable that you almost knew what was going to happen without even giving it any thought. Having said all that, the writers did manage to use some decent plot points from all of the movies that they had obviously watched, so the movie wasn't a total disaster. It's just not something that you should sit down with expecting to be overwhelmed by all of the creatively ingenious ideas; because it isn't going to happen. The acting is passable at best, on all counts including Sutherland. In Donald's defense, he didn't have a great deal of material to work with. He was playing the uncaring S.O.B. in this movie, which is a role that he has played many times before with much greater success. Julie Warner was also a disappointment since I had been very impressed with her in Doc Hollywood. The only others worth mentioning were Richard Belzer (Homicide: Life On The Street), and his character only said a few dozen words. Keith David also had a small role, but as usual, he made the most of it. The Puppet Masters is just your typical cookie cutter horror/sci-fi flick. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about it. But it was just good enough to keep my interest through the whole movie. Although, I can't say that I would rush out to watch it again any time in the near future. 5/10 Reviewed December 23, 1998 by Joe Chamberlain

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