BATTLEFIELD EARTH

Directed by Roger Christian. Starring John Travolta, Bary Pepper, Forest Whitaker, Kelly Preston

The First (and almost certainly the worst) blockbuster to benight our summer thus far, Battlefield Earth is a work of such devastating intellectual incompetence and emotional emptiness as to make Star Wars: Phantom Menace resemble Bergman's Seventh Seal. These are not necessarily terminal flaws in themselves - nobody enjoyed The Matrix for its depth - but there isn't even anything of note going on in the thrills-and-spills department, and without any especial visual dazzle to excuse the tragic dialogue, Battlefield ends up as an out-and-out embarrassment.

The plot is pretty threadbare: in the year 3000, a race of evil fascistoid aliens named the Psychlos (who view humans as a sub-animal species, and have ruled Planet Earth for the last thousand years) are strip-mining their resources when they capture an impertinent human hunter scavenging for food. He is then put to work by maniacal Psychlo security chief Terl (Travolta) who plans to keep his share of the bounty, but has reckoned without the magnificent indomitable spirit of the human race. It's all twice as ridiculous as it sounds, and the dialogue appears to have been cooked together from random cut-up fragments produced by a thousand monkeys who were locked up in a room overnight with typewriters (only worse).

Exactly what possessed the once-respected John Travolta to lend his services to the whole farrago can only be guessed at. Indeed, the only thing that enlivens the film remotely is his ridiculous physical appearance, sporting Ming the Merciless-style dreads and Nazi-style jackboots which render him completely unrecognisable from the smooth operator of Pulp Fiction and the like. Meanwhile, a thoroughly talentless young pretty-boy named Barry Pepper makes what may well be the least auspicious debut in feature history as the humanoid hero. One plot point follows another in spectacularly turgid, unimaginative fashion, while the finale aims all-out for an epic, sweeping tone and falls spectacularly flat on its face.

Marginally more tolerable than the Godzillas and Armageddons of this world by virtue of its utter preposterousness, this must nevertheless stand alone as one of the direst movies in the brief history of humankind.