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'Evolution' at 25: A perfect fusion of 'Ghostbusters' and 'Men in Black' that's become a sci-fi comedy classic
Pour out a bottle of Head & Shoulders for Ivan Reitman's Evolution on its 25-year anniversary.
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What started off as a sci-fi horror turned into one of the best sci-fi comedies ever when it dropped 25 years ago. Being true to its title, Ivan Reitman's "Evolution" proves that nothing ever stays the same – including story.
In 2001, the film landscape didn't exactly reward fans who liked funny sci-fi. "Ghostbusters" felt like a fever dream from the long-gone '80s, while "Men in Black II" was still a year away from sliding into theatres and making your neck work.
It was one or the other here; you either watched Steven Spielberg's stellar "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" for sci-fi, or Tom Green's gross-out "Freddy Got Fingered" for comedy. That is until "Evolution" fused the two genres and demonstrated that it's all chemistry, baby!
The story begins with a meteor crashing in the desert of Glen Canyon, Arizona. Poor wannabe firefighter Wayne Grey (played by the Stifmeister himself, Seann William Scott) witnesses it as the giant rock wrecks his car, so he calls in the authorities.
Community college professors Ira Kane (David Duchovny) and Harry Block (Orlando Jones) head over to the site and spot a trace of liquid near the meteor, so they take back a sample to the lab to monitor and analyse.
What they discover is that there are alien microorganisms splitting and evolving at a rapid pace in Earth's atmosphere. Nobel Prize incoming – well, at least in Harry's mind.
Trouble arrives when the military and government descend on the site. Once they discover there could be aliens involved, the bureaucrats take over, denying access to Ira and Harry and even stealing their research and samples. The problem is the bureaucrats aren't aware of the severity of the issue, while Ira, Harry, and Wayne uncover more facts about the circumstances. To put it simply, the extra-terrestrials are evolving at astronomical speed and are days away from taking over the country then the planet. Friendly alien creatures, these are not.
Expectedly, the military makes everything worse and decides that nuking E.T.'s uglier cousins is the only answer… or the next best thing — they want to use "Napalm. Lots and lots of napalm". Bad decision, since heat only accelerates the evolutionary cycle of the extra-terrestrials, so it's up to the little people to clean up the government's mess when the bureaucratic bozos want to live in the "find out" stage of this ordeal.