{"id":323,"date":"2002-01-19T17:13:28","date_gmt":"2002-01-20T01:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/01\/19\/evolution\/"},"modified":"2019-11-26T14:30:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T22:30:34","slug":"evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/01\/19\/evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:16596,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00005R874\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260314121942\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00005R874\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00005R874\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 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17:18:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16607,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/Name?Scott,+Seann+William&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/Name?Scott,%20Seann%20William&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:15179,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/Name?Moore,+Julianne&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/Name?Moore,%20Julianne&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16608,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00005RHFF\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260314124041\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00005RHFF\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00005RHFF\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 16:48:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 16:48:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16609,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00003CXSP\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260314131536\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00003CXSP\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/exec\\\/obidos\\\/ASIN\\\/B00003CXSP\\\/djwudicom-20&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 16:48:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 23:50:18&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 23:50:18&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s kind of a slow Saturday today, so Candice and I rented a couple movies to kill the day with. She&#8217;s working on homework while I watch the flicks, and the first one I checked out was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00005R874\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon: Evolution\">Evolution<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Name?Duchovny,+David\" title=\"IMDB: David Duchovny\">David Duchovny<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Name?Jones,+Orlando\" title=\"IMDB: Orlando Jones\">Orlando Jones<\/a> star as a couple scientists\/college professors who discover the crash of a metor in Arizona. The metor has punched through the surface into an underground cavern, and it brings a surprise package along with it &#8212; alien organisms that are able to evolve at a super-fast rate, letting them adapt to our atmosphere and threaten to overrun the natural life on the planet.<\/p>\n<p>About three out of five on this one &#8212; cute, but it could have been <em>so<\/em> much better.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I first heard about this film on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corona.bc.ca\/films\/mainFramed.html\" title=\"Coming Attractions\">Coming Attractions<\/a> movie news site. Back in November of 1999, CA webmaster Patrick Sauriol posted a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corona.bc.ca\/films\/directorscut\/991212.html#evol\" title=\"CA: Don Jakoby's 'Evolution'\">early script review<\/a> of the then-current draft of Evolution (<strong>8\/28\/08 update:<\/strong> The Coming Attractions site no longer exists, but the early script review can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duchovny.net\/articles3\/evolution98.htm\" title=\"DuchovnyNet: 1988 Review of 'Evolution'\">on the DuchovnyNet fansite<\/a>.). At that stage in the game, the story was being approached with an extremely different tone &#8212; rather than being the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B000060K4O\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon: Ghostbusters\">Ghostbusters<\/a>-esque comedy that it turned into, it was a serious Sci-Fi\/Horror piece scripted by <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Name?Jakoby,+Don\" title=\"IMDB: Don Jakoby\">Don Jakoby<\/a> that Patrick described as &#8220;an interesting fusion of science fiction and horror; sort of like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/6305077487\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon: The Andromeda Strain\">The Andromeda Strain<\/a> meets <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00000ILDE\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon: Aliens\">Aliens<\/a>&#8220;. He goes on to discuss in his column the pros and cons of the script at that early stage, but at that point it sounded very interesting &#8212; good thoughtful Sci-Fi is hard enough to come by in general, and a good Sci-Fi\/Horror film that had a brain behind it could be a lot of fun.<\/p>\n<p>Then, starting in June of 2000 (as detailed on CA&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corona.bc.ca\/films\/details\/evolution.html\" title=\"CA: Evolution\">news page for Evolution<\/a>), reports started coming in that the film had been picked up to be directed by <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Name?Reitman,+Ivan\" title=\"IMDB: Ivan Reitman\">Ivan Reitman<\/a>, and was going to be a comedy. This just didn&#8217;t seem to sit well, after the original script review. Again in the words of CA, &#8220;Stranger things have happened in Hollywood, but this one just kinda creeps us out. Like, how are they going to handle the calcium-eating worms that get under the skin of one of the scientists? Sounds like a gut-busting moment, don&#8217;t it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, however, Evolution hit the theaters in its present form&#8230;and, well, it&#8217;s not <em>bad<\/em>, just not what I think it could have been had it stayed true to its original form. David Duchovny did a good job with a fairly cookie-cutter role (and one can&#8217;t help but think that he was quite conciously spoofing his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00003RQND\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon: The X-Files First Season\">X-Files<\/a> persona throughout), and Orlando Jones was a decent supporting character. The other two primary supporting characters were <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Name?Scott,+Seann+William\" title=\"IMDB: Seann William Scott\">Seann William Scott<\/a> as a wannabe firefighter and <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Name?Moore,+Julianne\" title=\"IMDB: Julianne Moore\">Julianne Moore<\/a> as a bumbling government scientist who becomes the requisite love interest for Duchovny&#8217;s character. Again, neither of them were bad, but I can&#8217;t really say either of them really stood out much, either. Scott pretty much played the same lunkhead he did in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00005RHFF\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon: American Pie 1 &amp;amp 2\">American Pie films<\/a> as Stiffler, and I&#8217;ve seen Moore do much better work as FBI agent Clarice Starling in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B00003CXSP\/djwudicom-20\" title=\"Amazon: Hannibal\">Hannibal<\/a> (while I hated that film, I did think that she did a credible job in it).<\/p>\n<p>It was also somewhat disappointing to me that the filmmakers\/scriptwriters felt the need to base two major &#8216;comedic&#8217; moments &#8212; an alien bug getting into Jones&#8217; suit and then under the skin, and the climax of the film &#8212; around &#8216;butt&#8217; humor. While I&#8217;m no big fan of the current &#8216;PC&#8217; trend (I think it&#8217;s a decent concept that has gone way overboard), neither am I a big fan of the concurrent drive to compensate for political correctness by going the extreme other direction, which so many recent comedies feel they need to do. Fourth-grade humor is fine &#8212; if you&#8217;re in the fourth grade. At least for myself, I prefer something a bit more than jokes based around bodily functions, or the violation thereof, to get a decent laugh.<\/p>\n<p>However, I don&#8217;t want to sound like I&#8217;m doing nothing but trashing the film. It was an enjoyable enough silly romp, and the special effects were certainly worth seeing &#8212; the creatures looked great, from the early insectoid things wandering around the cavern to the flying dragon-type creature that invaded the shopping mall. It&#8217;s worth a rent, and as comedies go, I got enough giggles to give it a decent three stars &#8212; but not much more than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s kind of a slow Saturday today, so Candice and I rented a couple movies to kill the day with. She&#8217;s working on homework while I watch the flicks, and the first one I checked out was <b>Evolution<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2037],"tags":[1038,23],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-and-films","tag-evolution","tag-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}