Rewind Review #5 - Huh, that's not at all what I expected

You know how you are just now watching/reading/hearing that thing that everyone was talking about 1/2/10/15/20 years ago?  Or maybe you're revisiting something you LOVED and want desperately to talk about it to someone who cares?  Well, this is my forum to discuss that thing.  Join in, make suggestions, read my genius thoughts about that old school thing.  [Not to be confused with Old School, the movie, or being old school.  Although either of those may come up in the future.]
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The husband and I like to watch movies at home.  It gives us something we can do together, and we don't have to deal with humanity by venturing into the theater [which, by the way, LIES when it tells you what time the movie starts, and also plays commercials and yadda yadda yadda].

Anyway, because our tastes are so different, we try and take turns selecting movies until one or the other of us selects a few stinkers in a row, at which point that person is banned from picking movies for a while.

Recently, the husband picked District 9.

Neither of us had thought much about it.  I figured it was an alien invasion movie, like a Will Smith movies, and I think the husband thought it was, as well.

It wasn't.

I mean, it was, in that aliens landed on earth.  But it wasn't, in that those aliens were unable to keep their shit together and destroy us, which is what I always expect aliens will do.  My certainty comes from authorities as diverse as Signs, Orson Welles and Kang and Kodos.

Fucking Mel Gibson. He ruins EVERYTHING.

Anyway, the aliens land.  They get stuck here, in scenic South Africa, where they are penned up in slums.

They ain't gonna play Sun City.

Some twenty years later, this one guy who works for an evil corporation get assigned to head the rooting out of the aliens.  Because the people of South Africa have had ENOUGH.  They don't want these aliens in their back yard.  NIMBY at its finest.

The human guy [I forget his name. Let's call him Fred.], Fred, is a stooge of the Evil Corporation.  He is also the tactical lead of a group of mercenaries [or maybe the military?] and is doing an interview, so we get to see him in his glory, tearing into the alien slums and rousting them out, in his ineffectual, deskjobber manner.  In doing so, he gets infected and starts turning INTO an alien.

Which makes the Evil Corporation want to keep him around and make more of him!  Human-alien hybrids!  Perfect for every army you ever need!

Fred wants no part of this, and escapes.  He is then spun as a rogue alien/human hybrid who is masterminding . . . something.  Or maybe he's just evil and has to be stopped.  I'm not sure.  I had to go help the girl straighten her hair in the bathroom for a bit, and missed some things.

Anyway.

There's lots of blood and gore and dismemberment.  There's a touching father and son alien duo.  Fred spends a lot of time trying to contact his wife, who happens to be the boss's daughter.  Fred also spends a lot of time fighting, and it's a tough call deciding who comes off worse in the fight against Fred - the Nigerians or the evil corporation.  The aliens get shit on by everyone.

It's an o.k. alien movie and a smart precis on segregation and racism.  It's not something I'd watch again, but it was a meh way to pass some time.

[In case you're wondering, the husband went on to pick two stinkers {Avatar & The Book of Eli} so he's been banned from picking any more movies for a while.]