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
DVD features
Of the two commentaries, the more interesting is the one with the special effects supervisors, who engagingly demonstrate how the film's illusions ran the gamut from traditional "model & string" effects to the most sophisticated CGI applications. "Creating Reality" is the best of the three behind-the-scenes documentaries; "ID4 Invasion" is an interesting compilation of fictional news reports (some of them quite convincing) that were created for the TV reports within the movie, while the "HBO First Look" featurette hosted by Jeff Goldblum is rather glib and redundant. Of greater interest is the "special edition" cut of Independence Day and the original unused ending with Randy Quaid heroically piloting a vintage biplane instead of an advanced fighter jet. As producer Dean Devlin explains, the sight of a rickety airplane keeping pace with F-18 jets was "just not believable." --Jeff Shannon
