|
100
|
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
The alien attack, taking place in several cities at once, is breathtaking...All the same, Independence Day is consistently funny.
|
|
88
|
USA Today Mike Clark
A rousing state-of-the-art cartoon capped by an aerial-combat climax that, to its credit, isn't anti-climactic. [2 July 1996, p.D1]
|
|
83
|
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
It's the first futuristic disaster movie that's as cute as a button. Which, when all the special effects blow over, is what we Americans like in a monster hit.
|
|
80
|
The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
Two reasons it's impossible to resist "Independence Day": because of its pitch-perfect cartoonish dialogue ("Now you're never gonna get to fly the space shuttle if you marry a stripper!") and because the Captain, like Indiana Jones, is so unflappably tough.
|
|
80
|
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Cities engulfed by rolling walls of flame, sinister aquamarine power blasts turning beloved national monuments to toast, even the roiling clouds the spaceships appear out of, they are all disturbing, unsettling and completely convincing.
|
|
63
|
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
For all of its huge budget, Independence Day is a timid movie when it comes to imagination. The aliens, when we finally see them, are a serious disappointment.
|
|
63
|
San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser
Fans of sci-fi, special effects, big explosions, panicky crowd scenes and theater sound systems cranked up way beyond the capacity of the human ear to hear comfortably will love this movie. I am not among you.
|
|
50
|
Washington Post
Cruises to an upbeat ending but furnishes no more of the wicked thrills of the initial hour. Particularly disappointing is the human contrivance employed in the defeat of the vastly superior enemy.
|
|
50
|
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The action is fast, furious, and loaded with explosive effects, but the theme is a regrettable return to the us-against-them paranoia that dominated much science fiction in the cold-war era.
|
|
30
|
Washington Post Rita Kempley
An overgrown hybrid of disaster epic, can-do combat adventure and '50s sci-fi movie, this craft has visited our world many times before. And while she's a beaut, the sticker on her titanium bumper reads: "Been There, Done That, Beam Me Up, Scotty."
|
