Posted: 06/03/2001

Evolution

(2001)

by D. Patrick Seitz

Who ya gonna call now?

Lock up your daughters, creationists! The Darwinists are running amok, kicking ass, and taking names in Evolution, a pleasant nachos-and-Icee summer film.

For a man whose trademark ingredients seem to include quirky college professors and huge, gooey explosions, director/producer Ivan Reitman sure knows how to please an audience. In this summer of elephantine openings, uber-hype, and unrivaled expectations, Evolution shuffles forward unpretentiously to satisfy viewers in much the same way that Reitman’s Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 tickled our funny bones in the 1980s.

The story is straightforward enough: a meteor, laden with single-celled alien life, crashes into a remote portion of Arizona (that grand, arid state from which the monsters, mutants, and giant ants always seem to hearken). Local junior college professors Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and Harry Block (Orlando Jones) discover the little buggers and take some as samples. Later, before their astonished eyes, they watch as the tiny creatures evolve at a rate many hundreds of thousands of times faster than had the creatures of Earth. Just as Kane and Block see scientific acclaim within reach, the military steps in to take control and put the kibosh on their access to the meteor. Meanwhile, while the humans bicker, the aliens are getting bigger, meaner, and more adept at dealing with our atmosphere. Soon, they are poised to take over the entire state of Arizona, with the rest of the nation unequipped to prevent itself from becoming the main course. Apocalyptic hilarity ensues!

David Duchovny does an adequate job as Ira Kane, the junior college science professor with a brilliant and shrouded past. He puts in the same performance as always, keeping a serious and calm demeanor throughout. It is only because the situation in which he’s found himself is so quirky and bizarre that this characterization works. Simply put, Duchovny’s funny because he’s not, because he knows it, and because he doesn’t try to be funny. I applaud his restraint; lesser men would have succumbed to the schtick. Maybe he lacks the energy for outrageousness—but that’s a matter best left between him and Tea Leoni.

As always, Orlando Jones is a pleasure to watch. Whether he’s stealing the show, or just sitting back and letting events unfold, he’s a definite boost to the “property value” of any scene in which he appears. In Evolution, he puts in a first-rate performance as Harry Block, a self-inflated adjunct professor and girl’s volleyball coach. His character provides Duchovny’s with the foil he needs to function as well as he does. I’d like to think that somewhere, Ernie Hudson is smiling and nodding his head, finally and thoroughly avenged for having been the token minority ghostbuster.

Seann William Scott is hilarious, naked id as Wayne Green, a dimwitted young man whose raison d’être—to pass the required test and become a firefighter—is thwarted by an ill-timed encounter with the meteor as it touches down. Even when he’s not speaking, his thought processes are unfolding on his face for all to see. Definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but a handy enough accomplice when it comes time to save the world.

Julianne Moore? Yeah, she’s in it, and she puts in an okay performance. An unnecessary one, but the cast was a little testosterone-heavy, and a love-interest plot thread—whether superfluous or not—never hurt anybody. She plays Allison Reed, a cold-fish CDC scientist to whom Kane takes a liking. Think they get together by the end of the film. Oh, I ain’t telling. Reed falls down a lot, because the physics of the world in which a movie like Evolution takes place dictate that pretty female scientists must be exceedingly klutzy.

Is Evolution going to win any awards? Probably not. But it’s a good movie, enjoyable and understated, which can’t possibly disappoint because it opened to no pie-in-the-sky expectations. See it on a hot afternoon, or fairly warm evening. It’s the sort of movie that requires the summer heat to provide the proper catalyst.

D. Patrick Seitz is an actor, writer, and voice-over artist who is sitting very, very still because Los Angeles’ sense of sight is based on movement, and it’s been mighty hungry as of late.

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