Independence Day

The alien attack, taking place in several cities at once, is breathtaking...All the same, Independence Day is consistently funny.

Cities engulfed by rolling walls of flame, sinister aquamarine power blasts turning beloved national monuments to toast, even the roiling clouds the spaceships appear out of, they are all disturbing, unsettling and completely convincing.

The aliens, meanwhile, are a fabulously nasty lot of slimy, tentacled, malevolent telepaths, but all their superior technology is no match for our red, white and blue ingenuity. Take that, space bullies!

Emmerich succeeds only in making his previous venture, the marginal Stargate, look positively inspired by comparison.

The cutting-edge perfection of effects in Cameron and Spielberg films is replaced here by work that looks more homemade, particularly toward the end in some faintly cheesy composite shots.

Cruises to an upbeat ending but furnishes no more of the wicked thrills of the initial hour. Particularly disappointing is the human contrivance employed in the defeat of the vastly superior enemy.

A colossally dumb epic that happily traffics in third-hand imagery and ideas while feeding its audience maintenance level doses of humor, adrenaline and spectacle.

Classic pure entertainment on every level. This has aged so well and in 2026 so good to sit with my son and for him to see real hero’s, where the men are men, dads are dads. and they save the world. Great one liners, great soundtrack. AND the visuals are still better than what Hollywood produces today.

Giant, hostile alien spaceships appear overnight to move on Earth's natural resources; humanity's last, desperate hope is a shaky plan involving a captured UFO from the 1950s and an old PowerBook laptop. Seems like this one was a guilty-pleasure classic from opening day. ID4 isn't well-written and constantly bathes itself in dense layers of cheese, but it tries hard, most the character arcs connect and the big special effects hold up quite well, despite their age. For a movie that's so thoroughly reliant on spectacle, that last point is pretty important. The power of watching the White House or Empire State Building burst into a billion bitty pieces is still there, irresistible, while the magnitude of the invading fleet remains immense, and I think both can be attributed to the production's choice to eschew then-new CG techniques in favor of a large, intricately detailed stable of miniatures. We get a few hiccups, like the obviously green-screened fighter jets or the absurd visual **** retriever leaping to slow-motion safety through a fiery inferno, but for the most part it all looks great and it's still easy to get **** into the experience. Of course, the whole thing is over-acted to death. Roland Emmerich has never been one to bring out nuance from his cast, but this is an awfully shallow effort, even by his standards. Bill Pullman nails the big motivational speech, set to a telegraphed swell of patriotic symphony, but otherwise lacks conviction as a limp, reactive PotUS. Randy Quaid is a cheap xerox of every alien abductee stereotype to ever enter pop culture. Jeff Goldblum is naturally quirky enough to make his role worthwhile, but it takes every bit of his innate charismatic magnetism to overcome the dumb plot developments. Will Smith is the only unequivocal success, barking and fist-pumping his way to bonafide action hero status in a simple but essential role as a beefy marine / pure force of will. From a critical perspective, Independence Day is cinematic junk food. Big bangs and shiny lights to dazzle the box office crowd, with a few easy jokes to lighten the mood. But yet, there's something else to it, something essential and inexplicable. It's just raw, simple fun, I suppose, that makes no apologies for how it acts or what it aims to be. It won't make you think or weep, but you'll feel, and that's worth something.

Independence Day is a typical Roland Emmerich movie. Epic, beautiful in the trailer, but at the same time with an idiotic plot. There is not a bad cast here, a unique alien invasion of some kind. But the stupidity of the plot and the delusivity of the final battle only finally spoil the opinion of the film.

This is a bad movie with an overdone plot, a silly storyline, and bad acting. The special effects were likely good for their time, but by today's standards, they stink. The dialogue was cringe-worthy. The characters are all stereotypical, and the aliens are generic evil aliens with the depth of a puddle. A 3/10 is a gift.

A hugely stupefying epic that's too long and has had too much effort put into it for so little effect.