Just say no to ‘Independence’

It could have at least been fun, this whole Independence Day reunion tour. Parts were there – the new enormous spaceship, the queen leading the hive, etc.

But instead, flop, fizzle … other f words come to mind. Here’s the main two reasons not to see this room-temperature turd:

1. Beating the aliens is too easy. While I’d never argue ID4 was any sort of cinematic classic, it does a nice job of building the tension, putting our heroes backs up against the wall and making it hard to see that there’s any way out for the humans fighting the massive alien invasion. Here, the build is awkward and uneven, there’s little to no character development and the resolution both seems easy and somewhat ridiculous. Resurgence isn’t even a shadow of ID4‘s former self.
2. The goddamn school bus. At one point, Julius (Judd Hirsch) gets entangled with a family of newly minted orphans. Because riding in a late-model station wagon with a group of four kids younger than 16 isn’t cute enough, they then jump on a school bus with a bunch of kids whose driver has abandoned them on the side of the road. Then, because that wasn’t cute enough, they just happen to end up in the middle of the desert where David (Jeff Goldblum) is about to help take down the aliens once and for all. And because that isn’t cute enough, then David drives the school bus as he and his plucky band are chased by the enormous hive mother alien. The only things lacking to make this the schmaltziest film you’ve ever seen are Ewoks and a Randy Newman soundtrack.