Looks like we'll need some bigger guns. Photo provided by Rogue Studios.

In "Skyline", the 2010 edition of the classic alien invasion movie, jetsetters high on success, drugs, alcohol, and penthouse suites battle for survival as mysterious alien beings attack the world and in this case, Los Angeles. But most of us don't need to be concerned because if you pay close attention you'll notice the aliens only seem to be interested in people who maintain specific grooming and fashion standards. OK, every now and then they take somebody who's old or overweight, but mostly they just want the people who hit the gym regularly and look good. Also, no kids allowed on the ships, this ain't a family cruise.

Skyline seems to have been universally panned by the critics, and although I do see the reasons for that I still enjoyed it and recommend it for people who can lower their cinematic standards and just wallow in a good spectacle. Don't look for wisdom or good tactical decisions because you won't find any of that. This is a classic Irwin Allen style disaster movie with much better special effects.

Eric Balfour plays the lead role as Jarrod, someone with a camera and undisclosed talents which make him somehow indispensable to best wealthy buddy Terry, played by Donald Faison. Jarrod brings along his girl friend Candice, played by Brittany Daniel, and anyone else in the movie is just cannon fodder. People show up for awhile and seem important but then they get eaten by aliens. If you think Balfour looks familiar, he's the singer from Born As Ghosts and played a lead role in a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003. Faison you'll know from the TV sitcom Scrubs. Brittany Daniel didn't even look familiar.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS . . . .

Follow up:

The game you should play as you watch this movie is called "Pick Out the Pieces They Stole from Other Movies." I didn't see one original idea in the entire film, and I'm not even trying to trash it. I actually liked it, but it's one of those films where you just discard any concerns for art or credibility after the first two minutes of footage. Either you're able to have fun as aliens eat the world, or you're not.

You'll see many scenes from War of the Worlds but with machine-like tentacles instead of bio-engineering. You'll see familiar tactics from Independence Day, plot segments from The Matrix, and the key piece of information -- the reason the aliens are here -- seems to fall back to Frye's ultimate mission in the fabulous cartoon series Futurama. The invading aliens clearly resemble the Borg from later versions of Star Trek, although these cyborgs are a lot creepier and greasier. Axle grease seems to substitute for both blood and digestive fluid in the new technology.

The fun here comes largely from pointing out faults, such as the incomprehensible decision by Terry to lead the group of survivors through battle-torn L.A. in a convertible. The decision earns him quick justice, although we do expect to see him in the sequel. The poor tactics point out that the upper classes of L.A. lack survival skills -- the group keeps coming back to the apartment on the upper floor of the hotel, in spite of all the mayhem and the fact that since it's one of the few buildings still standing in L.A., it's a huge target. That's all ok, because it's eminently clear that no one in this feeble mental party is going to survive anyway. Physically they must be rough and tough, because the elevators quit working and the whole bunch manages to run up eighty flights of stairs without even getting winded. That includes the overweight security guard.

Technical glitches include the same security professional who uses a telescope to view a nuclear missile exploding and simply blinks off the effects that should have melted his eyeballs out of his skull. The movie ignores laws of physics regularly, allowing massive alien bio-juggernauts to climb up the sides of amazingly strong buildings without causing much damage. Maybe that's the result of high architectural standards in earthquake-prone L.A., but there are just too many times when a rampaging monster with the weight of a construction crane bounces off a building without doing more than rattling the window frames.

The terrible secret behind this alien rampage turns out to be the need for high quality brains. Humans aren't killed, but captured and stored in greasy piles aboard ship. When brains are required to activate new cyborgs, harvesters rip off a few heads, crack them like nuts, and install the new brains in their spiffy new alien bodies. Brain surgery turns out to be much simpler than we humans thought.

Skyline shamelessly sets the stage for a sequel which few people will actually want to see. I'd see it, because there's a chance somebody with better talent will come along and make a really good story out of this. Jarrod and Terry may come to blows a few times along the way with their L.A. male egos trapped in their gigantic cyborg bodies, but the real question is how in the world they're going to save the fair maiden Candice and still have sex with her. The newly re-designed heroes are much better equipped for mayhem than romance, although there's still the anal probing option.