Just another day at the White House

"Independence Day" (PG) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin.

The invitation to last month's multimedia preview of Roland Emmerich's lively disaster movie, Independence Day, carried an endorsement from the well known movie buff, William Jefferson Clinton "Everyone should see this movie I loved it." And why wouldn't he? Ever since its ultra slick trailer appeared in American cinemas, Independence Day was tipped by Steven Spielberg, among many others to be the blockbuster in a year full of competing mega buck, hi-tech productions and it is.

Given that this is an election year in the US, it's hardly surprising that the present incumbent of the Oval Office should warm to a super patriotic movie in which a fictional American president emerges as a hero in the forefront of defending his country from evil aliens. "Nuke `em," he yells. "Let's nuke the bastards."

Set over the course of three outlandishly eventful days, Emmerich's movie opens on July 2nd. Up on the moon, the Stars and Stripes flies, planted there in the summer of 1969 by Neil Armstrong. Down on planet earth, an ominous shadow gradually covers the land, as a massive alien spacecraft makes its entrance. It is not dissimilar in design from the flying, cathedral like vehicle which transported the aliens in Close Encounters Of the Third Kind, but the occupants of this interplanetary craft are far removed from the benevolence of Spielberg's extra terrestrials.

In Washington D.C. President Thomas J. Whitmore, a former Gulf War pilot, looks on in dismay as his approval rating plummets. "They elected a warrior and they got a wimp," observes one caustic television commentator. In case we miss the point, Whitmore is played by Bill Pullman, Hollywood's resident specialist in playing wimps.

When the hostile aliens strike, it's surprise, surprise the Iraqis who get hit first, but it's only a matter of minutes before the afore-mentioned ominous shadow is moving across New York, Los Angeles and Washington. "In the Gulf War we knew what to do," mutters the president through tightly pursed lips. "It's not that simple anymore."

The people are advised not to panic, which inevitably ensures maximum public hysteria and with good reason, too, as the Empire State building becomes a wall of flame and the White House explodes into smithereens, conveniently, just seconds after the president and his team escape aboard Air Force One.

For the purposes of audience identification, director Emmerich and his co writer, Dean Devlin, assemble an archetypal gallery of stock, cardboard characters, carefully chosen to span ethnic, age and gender groupings. There's Jeff Goldblum as a Jewish, chess playing computer wizard Margaret Colin as his ex-wife, who just happens to be, employed a President Whitmore's communications director and a jarring Judd Hirsch as his loquacious Jewish poppa. Even Harvey Fierstein turns up as an outrageously camp television executive, working with Goldblum.

For black audiences, there's the gung ho fighter pilot (Will Smith) determined to "get up there and whip E.T.'s ass", and his lover (Vivica Fox), a single mother working as a stripper. Randy Quaid plays a crazed Vietnam veteran with a teenage Tex Mex family. And there's Mary McDonnell as the independently minded career woman married to President Whitmore, and Mae Whitman as their daughter who's just a few years younger than Chelsea Clinton.

As the screenplay, abounding in the most unlikely of coincidences, brings all these disparate soap operatic characters together, it's Will Smith who emerges strongest from this cast. Looking as if he's enjoying himself, Smith plays his cocky character with aplomb, never more so than when he drags an alien in a parachute across the desert.

Independence Day is such a knowing confection that Jeff Goldblum at one point utters the immortal words, "The clock is ticking", and Emmerich and Devlin's screenplay plunders cinema's past as it explicitly evokes references to any number of movies, principally The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The War of the Worlds, Dr Strangelove, Close Encounters and Alien. Audiences will have ample time to spot all the other references during the slack periods which pad the movie out to its over extended 145 minute duration.

Emmerich, the German director who has specialised in science fiction tales such as Moon 44 and Stargate, employs vertiginous camera angles, a battery of special effects and matte shots, and some beautifully lit scenes of apocalyptic mass destruction, accompanied by wistful choral music. And the elaborate air battle looks and sounds like a computer game which it will be before the end of the year.

Independence Day is a witty and mostly entertaining, large scale comic strip romp, which adheres so closely to its formulaic scheme of things that the biggest surprise it offers is that the US president and his White House staff actually rely on Sky News for their information. Even that's not too surprising, given that the movie was produced by 20th Century Fox which, like Sky, is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

"Angel Baby" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin.

Few films on the international film festival circuit over the past year generated such an audibly emotional response from audiences as the moving Australian film, Angel Baby, which marks an auspicious debut for its writer director, Michael Rymer, who previously worked in short films, documentary and theatre.

Angel Baby is, on one level, a passionate love story, and on the other, an unflinching picture of the many problems faced by two clinically psychotic young people when they fall in love. Harry, played by the Irish actor, John Lynch, first meets Kate (Jacqueline McKenzie) at the centre where they both receive medication and treatment. His life is confused by the bouts of psychosis he undergoes, while she is highly strung, superstitious and impulsive.

For a while, the outlook is rosy as the two of them fall in love and move in together and Harry regains his job. When Kate becomes pregnant, the doctors decide that pregnancy is too risky for her and her child, and the two lovers are faced with an uphill battle which tests their individual strengths and their personal relationship to the limits.

Rymer's acutely observed and unpatronising film is charged with anger, feeling and wit, and especially by the vivid, intimate and deeply immersed central performances of Jacqueline McKenzie (from Romper Stomper) and John Lynch, both of whom are on terrific form.