Movie Review: District 9

Everyone I know and critics alike seems to be so taken by this movie while I only find it ok, is there anything wrong with me? I guess first I have to say that I didn't know much about the movie to start with and I was expecting an human alien all out battle to start with but this one slightly differs.

In an alternate universe, an independence day type mothership arrived in earth 20 years ago and hovered around until it reached Johannesburg, South Africa. With no communication coming from the aircraft, humans begin to fly up and explore until they found a colony of malnourished alien who were waiting for their impending death. The humans built a colony named "District 9" where the aliens can inhabit.

The years had passed and the colony grew stronger and the humans had outlived the thrill of alien contact. The alien are treated more as pests as they sift through human trash for food and eating tires - the marshmallow for aliens, and cat food - the catnip for aliens. With their crustacean outlook, they were dubbed as "prawns". A multi-nation government unit called the MNU is in charge of controlling the prawn population by doing random search for weapons and destroying and new born cocoons. Since there are conflicts between humans and prawns in the area, MNU had designed and built a more concentration camp like district 10 to house prawns and pending an eviction project and the head of the project is Vikus.

Vikus, who is also the son-in-law of the head of MNU, see prawns pretty much like a science project. But when with a very expected unexpected turn, he begins to see the "human" side of prawns.

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My grandma used to tell me when I'm listening to a story I shouldn't be asking questions to ruin it, but there were a lot of nuisance that completely distract me from enjoying the movie and I think they are the main cause for me to not like it as much as I should.

Obviously, the prawns are a more advance race comparing to human, they have very advance weaponry and machinery. How come they did not try to overtake the area or even conquer the human race or at least rob people for food/cat food? How come with a million prawns in the ship and there's no leaders? How did the human learn alien language? They took 20 years to gather bioenergy fuel, what about all the weapons lying around and technology from the spaceship above? Some of the fuel leaked out, don't they need more now to replenish it? Why wouldn't the human help gathering the fluid, don't they want the alien to leave? Why does the Wikus have such a strong accent while his mom and dad doesn't seem to be the same? The questions go on and on... Living in the moment apprently is not my strong suit.

Sharlto Copley, the person who plays Wikus, have a very generic look that can be mistaken from a wide variety of people. He plays a cowardly, naive unlikely protagonist. It is pretty much a one-man show but David James who plays a bald MNU mercenary has tremendous porn star quality. Good and believable CGI but I guess I'll have to give it probably the lowest score anyone would give this movie. C+