Amazon.com Essentials:
In Independence Day, a scientist played by Jeff
Goldblum once actually had a fistfight with a man (Bill Pullman) who
is now president of the United States. That same president, late in
the film, personally flies a jet fighter to deliver a payload of
missiles against an attack by extraterrestrials. Independence
Day is the kind of movie so giddy with its own outrageousness that
one doesn't even blink at such howlers in the plot. Directed by
Roland Emmerich, Independence Day is a pastiche of conventions
from flying-saucer movies from the 1940s and 1950s, replete with icky
monsters and bizarre coincidences that create convenient shortcuts in
the story. (Such as the way the girlfriend of one of the film's
heroes--played by Will Smith--just happens to run across the
president's injured wife, who are then both rescued by Smith's
character who somehow runs across them in alien-ravaged Los Angeles
County.) The movie is just sheer fun, aided by a cast that knows how
to balance the retro requirements of the genre with a more
contemporary feel. --Tom Keogh
