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(This review originally appeared on Themestream.com) While you lift the manhole cover (where’s the P.C. replacement for that word?) and descend, rung by wet, greasy, rotten-stench-infused rung into the dark scary world of Video Sewer, let me toss down these thoughts: Philadelphia ‘76ers vs. San Antonio Spurs for the NBA title this year, (you heard it here first) and also, be sure to check back in a few days for vital observations on the latest Survivor! Now I must sit down in front of the tube and start sponging up cheap beer with a frightening voracity, and let REVIEW-RIGHT 2001 (a new freeware program written by my 11 year old cousin Gerald) take over this review for Battlefield Earth, new on home video. This program is great! I plugged in these words: crap, Travolta, no mercy and pomegranate. Now let’s see what the REVIEW-RIGHT 2001 spits out! You humans must protect Travolta with soft warm blankets of pity, while some right thinking soul shanks him on the sly, saving us from any other filmic effort he might choose to cash a $20 million dollar check for. Note to Ellen; you’re all right by me, maybe you should be the one to shank brother John… Battlefield Earth is the vehicle Travolta uses to subject poor Forrest Whitaker, Barry Pepper and anyone else who watches, to Jason of Star Command level Scientologist propaganda. Which is not to say that it’s not without entertainment value. It just happens to go on forty minutes too long, and be amazingly stupid. Travolta cackles through his usual soap opera thespics (?), wearing two-foot tall platform boots and lots of leather to hide his huge gut, as the evil Terl of the Psychlos, a race of 8-foot tall uglies with gigantic craniums and nasty dreadlocks (in reality they’d be sitting in front of Nordstrom’s begging for change)… Sorry people, it seems the REVIEW-RIGHT 2001 still has a few bugs; I’ll try and finish this off while my nacho cheese warms in the microwave. Battlefield Earth is a thousand page novel about evil aliens who, by the year 3000, have rendered humanity into slavery, savagery, and near extinction. L. Ron Hubbard, one assumes, packs the book with pseudo-religious messages of hope for the ‘clear’ man. By the time it gets to the screen, it’s been reduced to two long hours of 1960s Batman-style filming (in fact it took me 20 minutes to get my land legs back after viewing) with little to say, and less to keep us interested. Travolta-haters and those with a penchant for bad sci-fi will be in hog heaven, if not a bit wearied by the end. Invite a bunch of masochistic friends over and have a ridicule party that will give you the next level of entertainment.
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