My thesaurus lists several synonyms for the word “dumb,” but I’ve crossed them all out and printed just two words in their place: "Battlefield Earth."  This film adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard’s best-selling 1982 sci-fi book is just as silly as the religion he created, and it probably never would have been made if it weren’t for the constant lobbying by the film’s star/producer (and raging Scientologist) John Travolta.

Comparisons to Planet of the Apes will be inevitable, but Earth comes off as more of an ill-conceived cross between the 1984 Brat Pack film Red Dawn and Styx’s concept album “Killroy Was Here.”  It’s a heavy-handed good-versus-evil story that is poorly directed, poorly written, poorly acted and plays like a movie made for 2:00 AM viewing on basic cable rather than the summer blockbuster season.  The best description of the film I’ve seen is as follows: “Give Ed Wood a $100 million budget, and you get Battlefield Earth.”

Earth is set in the year 3000 (it’s actually subtitled A Saga of the Year 3000), where a sadistic alien race from the planet Psychlos has taken over Earth and wiped out most of its inhabitants.  Terl (Travolta, The General’s Daughter) is the Psychlo Security Director of Earth who, as the film opens, finds out that his proposed transfer back to Psychlos has been postponed for several years.  Terl has a sidekick named Ker (Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog), who looks like a melange of The Next Generation’s Worf and the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz.

Meanwhile, Johnnie (Barry Pepper, The Green Mile), one of Earth’s few remaining humans, decides he’s fed up with living in fear of the Psychlos and rides horseback to what used to be Denver to confront the aliens head-on.  Johnnie is immediately captured by Terl, who tries to use the spunky young Earthling to mine gold in an area of the planet containing radioactive air that is deadly for Psychlos.

What unfolds is a predictably conventional story of the meek inheriting the Earth – literally.  With a story this unimaginative, you would expect some decent, over-the-top violence, or at least cutting-edge special effects, but Earth offers neither.  Instead, the film attempts to be inventive by shooting every scene off-kilter and using a completely annoying dissolve from the center of the screen as a transition between scenes.  Some of Earth’s dialogue is bad enough to induce mock laughter and applause from the audience, MST3K-style.

Travolta is just plain silly in the role he’s been waiting his whole life to play.  His Terl kind of sounds like Stewie on The Family Guy – another person with an oddly-shaped head and, in a harmlessly evil kind of way, ambitions beyond his means.  The cackling Terl and his alien cohorts all look like Coneheads with dreadlocks and disgusting baked-bean teeth (Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston makes a brief cameo and has perfect white choppers).  I’d like to comment on the other actors in the film, but Earth is one of those pictures where you’re not sure what anybody’s name is.  And to make matters worse, Earth only covers half of Hubbard’s 1,000-plus page novel.  The filmmakers plan on releasing a sequel in two years.

Much has and will be said about the similarities between Earth and Scientology.  Travolta swears one has nothing to do with the other, but he’s as honest with himself as anybody else that’s this into their religion. Scientologists believe that psychiatrists are responsible for the majority of evil in the world, so it’s no coincidence that the bad guys in the film (and Hubbard’s book) are called Psychlos.  I have a lot more to say about Scientology but won’t, as their figureheads have a tendency to sue people that don’t think Hubbard hung the moon.  Some people have even accused Scientologists of inserting subliminal messages into Earth.  Don’t worry – if they did, I’m sure that I would have liked it a lot more.  Or, at least, I would have <KZZAAAPPP> cluck…cluck…cluck.

2:07 – for sci-fi violence and mild adult situations