Skyline 2010 The Brothers Strause

 

Ok, so what I said before about Alien 2: On Earth being a fun bad movie?  I take that back.  Skyline is the epitome of a fun bad movie.  Why would a movie hire a bunch of TV actors?  To spend all their money on the special effects!  This movie is awesomely bad because no one seemed to have the heart to tell said TV actors that that was the plan.  It seems that they just locked them in this apartment building for a week, knocked out all the "dramatic scenes", and then moved on to what this movie was all about: Special effects.

The movie was directed by two brothers who give themselves the douchey name "The Brothers Strause".  Their real names are actually Greg and Colin Strause, they worked in special effects for a long time, and they finally got their chance to direct a movie with Alien vs Predator 2: Requiem, or AVP2:R, if you're more acronymically inclined.  Or stupid.  That was a fun bad movie as well, but I remember thinking that calling yourselves "The Brothers Strause" seemed like a particularly pathetic reference to that other filmaking pair The Wachowski Brothers.

Oh, how right I was.  The aliens in this movie are EXACT copies of the mechanical contraptions that chased Keanu Reeves around when he was in the real world and not the Matrix.  But this time they're different, because they're aliens, not machines.  Totally different.  I'm fine with that simply because it leads to the finest Man vs Rubber Monster fight since Bela Lugosi tangled with the rubber octopus in Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster.  Seriously, you should watch the movie just for that alone.

And that's not even getting to the end, which is the greatest ending in bad movie history.  I know you're not supposed to laugh at movies like this - the world's being invaded by aliens, everyone's dying, holy shit, it's serious, but c'mon!  It's hilarious!  It's perfect stupid (and I do mean STUPID) fun with a capital F.

So if you're looking for a movie which manages to combine War of the Worlds, The Matrix, Alien Resurrection, Fiend Without a Face, King Kong, and the original Beauty and the Beast in only 94 minutes, then do yourself a favor and rent this glorious mess.  You'll be happy to know that Skyline 2 is apparently on track for next year as well.  After that ending, I can't wait.

The DVD for Skyline is pretty loaded.  You get deleted scenes, extended scenes, fx visualizations and a couple of commentaries, so if you wanna know how and why the filmmakers did what they did, you're all set.  Me, I'm just gonna keep watching that fight.  It's comedy gold.