EVOLUTION

Ivan Reitman’s fun sci-fi comedy doesn’t aim for mock grandiosity like Independence Day — rather, it seems small and intimate, like Tremors. Reitman, of course, directed Ghostbusters, and he ain’t afraid of no repetition. Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and Harry Block (Orlando Jones) are more losers than scientists, and though they don’t have the divergent personalities of the ghostbusters, each possesses an excellent dry wit and the ability to remain perfectly calm in the face of hungry aliens. They’re teaching at an Arizona community college (where Kane give A’s to almost everyone) when an asteroid lands nearby. It turns out the asteroid contains unicellular organisms that, in the earth’s atmosphere, can rapidly evolve. In the rare moments when they’re not goofing off, Ira and Harry study the aliens and look forward to their Nobel Prize. But then the Army and government scientists enter the scene, and, taking a page out of Stripes, another Reitman classic, the film adds on a little-guys-versus-the-military-bureaucracy dimension.

Duchovny and Jones play well off each other (and the cute aliens), and Seann William Scott, as a local yokel, certainly uses his moronic shtick to better effect than he did in Dude, Where’s My Car? Julianne Moore, though, isn’t give much to work with as a government scientist. This, like so many of Reitman’s films, is a boys’ affair.

— Mark Bazer