[Movie 315 / Day 335]
The latest live action made-for-TV movie of the popular kids show, ALIEN SWARM is based on the Alien Force version of the cartoon where Ben and Gwen have grown into their teens and have teamed up with Kevin E. Levin (who, as my sketchy knowledge of the show tells me, was a baddie in the earlier cartoons).
Anyway, the three kids now roll around in Kevin’s cool green car and put the smackdown on various aliens, trespassing on Earth. They investigate a group of shady teenagers who are trying to flog some black-market alien technology. Before our intrepid heroes can do anything about it though, a shady character in a trench-coat and hat takes control of the technology for sale – it turns out to be nano-bot things that fly around and infest people, taking over their minds and assimilating them into a hive mentality. With help from one of Ben’s childhood friends, an ex-Plumbers daughter called Elena, the friends have to solve the mystery of the flying nano-bots before the entire world is assimilated. I should probably explain here that members of the underground organisation dedicated to fighting alien threat are called Plumbers and Elena’s father was a scientist working for them – not that he’s handy at unblocking drains.
The plot is ludicrously simple and blindingly obvious (the twist is apparent within about 15 minutes of the opening credits) – I know the movie is based on an animated series and aimed at kids, but that’s is no excuse. The cartoon generally has better, more involving plots than this. The characters somehow come across as flat and boring in the movie, too – I guess because the writers felt that the backstory would already be very familiar to their audience. Fair enough, but I’d rather have seen more character development than there is. It seems the writers felt that in order to connect to any teenagers watching the movie, the best course of action would be to have all of the teenagers in the movie whine more.
On the plus side, the production values of this movie have been ramped up exponentially compared to the awful earlier live action flick, BEN 10: RACE AGAINST TIME. Yes, the style has changed from bright and colourful to dark and moody – but that’s just following the natural progression of the animated series. What really helps ALIEN SWARM to stand out in comparison to it’s predecessor is the huge ramp up in the quality of the CGI (Ben’s aliens look far less cartoon-like in this, for instance) and the step up in the quality of both acting and the general writing (the dialogue is much, much improved). For the most part, this actually looks like a movie rather than a feature-length episode.
So, it got some things right, it got some things wrong – if only the writers had been allowed to create a story to rival some of those seen in the animated series, this could have been an above average tie-in. As it is, it sits below par. Having said all of that, my 6-year old son, who is a huge Ben 10 fan, absolutely loved it (helped in no small part by having a real Kevin’s Cruiser to gawp at). I guess that says something, considering he’s well below the age I imagine ALIEN SWARM to be aimed at.
My Rating: 
[ IMDB rating: 4.8 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 90 mins | Buy it! ]
