District 9 is a potential mind fritter for moviegoers. It deliciously succeeds in engaging all those who are willing to refrain from paying too much attention to the lead actor's accent and odd being - a mixture of geekness and meekness and "how the hell did he end up with a woman like that?" - into a world that seems so grotesquely similar, but still magical.
Peter Jackson goes from directing a bunch of non famous low budget horror movies to being the signature name of Tolkien's blaspheming saga of day long movies. And now, this. It honestly feels that Jackson can grab a title such as "Jenna Jameson against the crazy twelve legged freaks" and turn it into something that Buddhists will revere. It is always sweat producing the pressure of turning a plot about aliens under the governmental supervision of South Africa into a mega success, but Jackson brilliantly did it, unless the movie was the reason why those two hundred pounds were lost. Well, maybe not that much.
There might be some discomfort in the way the audience gets used to the documentary style in the beginning of the piece. It looks odd, clumsy, slightly too fast to accompany, but soon the plot reigns and there will be an eighty six percent chance moviegoers will marry the screen. Hopefully there won't be any divorce with the very possible sequence.
District 9 succeeds in entertaining, due to its irreverent fusion of elements: insect looking aliens, metamorphosis, human greed, Nigerian gangs that prostitute their women to the aliens or trade weapons with cat food, typical Hollywood unidentified fucking objects, gruesome imagery such as nails popping off (I doubt Jackson did not watch the movie "The Fly"), blood - either red or black or perhaps a little purplish black- in an environment of surreal spoliation, and swearing in south African accent.
But then, it actually succeeds in its surprising soul reaching preaching, specially when the African opera singing kicks in. People will probably find themselves rooting for the aliens and non sexually attach themselves to their extraordinary extra-terrestrial motives. The best movies are those that turn the audience into the characters, to a point that they feel what Wikus Van De Merke (yes, the name is bizarre) severely suffers in his living Freddy Kruger depressing nightmare, and Christopher's parenthood towards his child, specially because Christopher is a f*** E.T.! That, allied with golden unpredictability and impressive special effects, makes District 9 a district that you must now enter.
As of today:
IMDB rating - 8.8
Rotten tomatoes rating - 88%
My score: 86
