Alien vs Predator

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Or so my mother used to say.

On this occasion, however, the humanitarian in me feels compelled to warn as many people as I can about the inane, vacuous, waste of celluloid, time and potential that is Alien Vs Predator.

The film's myriad flaws can be traced back to one initial blunder - the appointment of director Paul WS Anderson.

With a track record of churning out appalling genre flicks (Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat), it's no wonder that Anderson's AvP is a vapid disappointment, which plays more like a video game than a movie.

How anyone thought he could be trusted with not one but two massive Hollywood franchises is beyond me.

The film is set on earth in the present day - that's approximately seven years after the last Predator visited our planet, and a little under 2,000 years before Sigourney Weaver comes across her first Alien, deep in outer space - anyone familiar with the Alien movies should already be able to see how this film doesn't quite tie in with it's predecessors.

An expedition of archaeologists discovers a pyramid hidden beneath the Antarctic. When they investigate, they find themselves caught in a labyrinthine training ground, where Predators prove their worth by fighting to the death with (you guessed it) Aliens.

Cue the screaming, and the running and the dying and stuff.

Fans of the original movies will find countless reasons to criticise Alien Vs Predator, most notably the sacrilegious flouting of intrinsic sci-fi folklore: Drastically diminished Alien gestation periods, a complete disregard for the comic book stories, so on and so forth.

For the less pedantic among you, Alien Vs Predator is just a poorly-made film.

The script is appalling, every line delivered with a leaden sense of importance, ensuring a painful predictability throughout.

Anderson doesn't know the difference between darkness and blackness (the former is scary, the latter dull) and much of the film is impossible to make out.

To its credit, there are some nice-looking CGI Aliens but the shoddy fight sequence editing means they're impossible to appreciate - and the Predators still look like men in rubber suits.

If you lower your expectations far enough, you might just glean a little enjoyment from the second half of Alien Vs Predator, once the action gets going. If not, I would give this one a wide berth.