“You can’t escape, Bob! If the tennis rackets don’t get you, the pool skimmers will!” – Bart Simpson
There is a dull but unpleasant feeling to being unexpectedly disappointed by a movie one had hoped to enjoy. This feeling is different depending on the kind of movie: a comedy that fails because the jokes fall flat doesn’t feel the same as a costume drama where the leads are weak or a documentary that mishandles its subject. For a summer popcorn movie where spectacle and fun are expected parts of the package, disappointment feels like a running hunger pang: I expected something big and enjoyable but got something small and mediocre. Disclosure Day makes very big promises – Spielberg! Aliens! Somewhat topical! – but is instead a small, mediocre, and unappealing combination of overcooked and underdone.
For the overcooked part, let’s start with the script, which is bursting at the seams with big ideas, traumatic backstories, chase scenes, and a metric ton of alien lore. The film weighs in at 2h25m, and, given the number of things we only glimpse but that seem very important to the characters, I’ll bet the first cut was well north of three. To take but one example, early in the film there are multiple lengthy discussions about what effect the knowledge of aliens will have on people’s religious faith, including a big disagreement between two of our heroes. The last word the film has to say on the subject comes ~30m from the end when a lady we haven’t seen and don’t know spontaneously makes the sign of the cross and kneels before Emily Blunt (now part alien), who promptly yells that she won’t be someone’s religion before running off. That’s it, that’s the payoff for something the movie spent quite a while setting up and seemed to think was very important.
For underdone, let’s discuss the many (many) chases and how they are all bad (even the one that’s sort of good). Colin Firth, made up to look like bearded Kelsey Grammar from 30 Rock, is our villain, and spends the entire movie being thwarted at every turn as he and his ludicrously incompetent goons fail over and over. He also whines a lot. Taken as a whole, he possess the same amount of menace as a wet towel bunched in a corner.
And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling weather lady!
To dispel all doubt early, the movie opens when Firth and a whole squad of henchpersons (it’s very corporate evil) lose Josh O’Connor, his girlfriend whom they previous had in their trunk, and the alien artifact he’s stolen without so much as getting in their cars to follow him. Giving up easily will be a running theme with these guys. Later, Josh steals a car in front of about twenty of them, crashes it repeatedly, then escapes from them three times in an increasingly beat up sedan. It’s low speed, low stakes, and ends when they fall for the ol’ “car fell off the cliff but not us, haha!” trick. Later he will escape on a moving train in full view of the bad guy, who gracefully exits the scene rather than radio for backup to track down the most important knowledge in human history which his supposedly ultra-competent, ultra-capable organization has been keeping secret for (according to the movie) 79 years.
The train scene is easily the movie’s highlight and the only sparkle of the old magic to be had. Emily and Josh have to fight their way out of a car pushed beneath a moving freight train before an oncoming Amtrak (which at no point brakes, lol) slams into them. It’s fun and well shot and looks (mostly) great. But nothing on either side of it makes sense and this burst of color and creativity also serves to highlight how tepid the rest of the proceedings are.
For example, when the bad guys do finally manage to catch Josh O’Connor they still screw the pooch. As O’Connor surrenders in a cheap motel bathroom, Eve Hewson and the artifact go out the back window and into the next scene (at a diner where she makes friends, has a loud public conversation, and no one is looking for her). The cars full of cops and goons didn’t think to check out back, they just round up Josh, yell at him for not having what they want, and leave. Also, there’s a background plot about Russia and the US on the brink of of WWIII over North Korea. If this mention feels sudden and unconnected to the rest of the review, that is my artistic salute to the movie’s handling of it.
To give credit where its due, the personal stunts, particularly in the invisibility fight near the end (don’t ask) are impressive. The standout was two guys eating shit hard by crashing full speed into an unseen front window, but there’s a lot of credit to go around and this list goes longer than the screenshot here.
The bottom line on this movie is probably whether or not you’re into Roswell, little gray men, and all the attendant alien mythos that has grown up around it. If you’re a believer in that, or curious, maybe this all goes down smooth. If you, like me, think that stuff is mostly a pop reflection of larger anxieties that’s been exploited for culture and profit for decades, it just feels tired and unimaginative.
The information being “disclosed” is mostly faux grainy footage of aliens: crashed and bleeding, bound and interrogated, walking into a meeting with humans, they’re very active little guys. On a technical level, this secret archival footage is shockingly poorly done, all of it looks cinematic, modern, and digital. For a man old enough to have worked during the Nixon Administration, when the first footage we see is from, Spielberg must have preferred the shininess of modern technique to any attempt at fidelity. As a wrap up to a big budget summer blockbuster, a fictional movie saying “it’s all true” about footage that looks faker than usual is deeply unsatisfying.
Stray Thoughts:
- We saw a flock of nuns (in habits) coming out of the theater as we were going in, presumably for this. When will Hollywood stop inserting unnecessary nun content into movies to pander to that lucrative audience?
- As bad as many of the effects are (the CGI animals stand out as particularly odd looking), the real life shots are gorgeous. As a friend of mine pointed out, they drove a car off a cliff and we got to watch, and that ain’t bad.
- Emily Blunt gets to do some fun weirdo acting early, but by the middle of the film she mostly stares at people while her powers do the work. Nobody else gets much to work with (at least that made it to screen).
- Speaking of not much to work with, Coleman Domingo plays the anti-Firth in a part where most of his dialog, delivered complete with headset and mic, is pep talks or basic instructions.
- Colin Firth:
- There is one scene where the backdrop of a potential nuclear war actually plays out, at a gas station where people are clearing the shelves. What’s odd about it, though, is that there’s still plenty of gas and there’s a store employee calmly restocking who’s happy to answer questions. The setting and the people don’t match.
- Early on there is a delightful long tracking shot over and around a fence that follows O’Connor into a car. Another highlight.
- I don’t intend this as mean even though it will be read as mean, but the many confusing truncations in the story, most of which I assume were done for time, reminded me a lot of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon movie/saga/whatever. The short version is straight up bad, boring even. The longer version is weird enough to be much more entertaining. Zack’s into tentacle porn and flowing gore, Steven’s into Roswell shit and shallow religious meditations, but the weirder we let our old directors be the more likely we are to reap interesting entertainment. I would happily watch the 3h38m version of this (at home), but what’s here is too confused to be good unless you’re really into alien conspiracies. I wanna see Steven world build! Release the Spielberg cut!
- SPOILER POINT
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Maybe I’m alone, but I had a very hard time believing that footage from a station in KC would have immediate worldwide credibility. Like, a really really hard time. You would have to post that fuzzy film set looking crap on the most knuckle dragging of conspiracy websites for anyone to take it seriously. But I was cranky by that point so maybe it’s just me.Ugh, what a waste of a movie.