Pun Salad

But I can't resist making a similar point to one I've raised in the past: it's nice that Jack Finney gets his book made into a movie four times, but why can't we get a single freakin' decent Robert Heinlein movie? Sigh.

Well, one reason is that plot: alien invaders turn your friends and family into conspiratorial zombies whose only goal is to zombify you and everyone else. That's an appealing blank slate for Hollywoodians to write a "message" on. The 1956 version is alleged by deep thinkers to be either about Communism or McCarthyism, maybe both. When I first saw it as a youngster, I was oblivious to that; it was just good creepy science fiction.

In this version, the pods are gone, replaced by a takeover method that's even more disgusting, albeit in a PG-13 way. Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter are replaced by Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig (respectively). In a tedious dinner-party scene, Nicole pronounces herself a "postmodern feminist", which I assume is part of the "message", but I didn't get it. I was kind of hoping this would mean she'd analyze the takeover using incomprehensible prose while puffing on French cigarettes. No such luck: when push comes to shove, she's screaming, running, and shooting just as I would imagine Ann Coulter might do, but Ann would be funnier.

Bottom line: more fun to make fun of than actually watch. But there's no Rifftrax available, so I can't recommend it.