Last night, I forever lost 2 hours of my life because I watched the latest SyFy “original” film, Invasion Roswell, with my friends, the Snarkalecs.
Why Was I Watching It?
When I first heard the title of the latest SyFy film, I thought to myself, “Roswell!? I kinda remember that show!” However, I quickly realized that — other than taking place in New Mexico and featuring aliens — Invasion Roswell had nothing to do with Katherine Heigl’s old TV show.
Invasion Roswell was actually broadcast on Thursday night. As we’ve been doing ever since SyFy stopped showing original films on Saturday, the Snarkalecs dvred Invasion Roswell when it first premiered and then we actually watched (and live-tweeted) it on Saturday.
Why did we do this?
Because that’s what we do.
It’s an existential thing.
What Was It About?
This film was a combination Red and about every single alien invasion film that’s even been made. Aliens invade the Earth and naturally, they chose to destroy large parts of London and Paris (take that, Europe!), as well as Washington D.C. (take that, IRS!). It turns out that the only people who can defeat this threat are a bunch of old alien hunters who have been previously forced to retire by a random corporate guy in a suit.
So, while Patrick (Greg Evigan) and Linda (Denise Crosby) attempt to get the old gang of gun-wielding geezers back together again, the aliens continue to progressively conquer every inch of the planet.
(Except for Canada, of course. Canada’s tough!)
What Worked?
The aliens themselves were effective, especially when compared to some of the invaders who have populated previous SyFy films. Clad in black armor and firing blue laser beams, the aliens managed to be intimidating and campy at the same time.
The Snarkalecs managed to get Invasion Roswell trending on twitter during the entire two hours we spent watching it. It was fun to watch non-snarkalecs try to figure out why Invasion Roswell was trending. “Have we been invaded?!” one random dumbfug toadsucker tweeted. Seriously, some people are stupid.
What Did Not Work?
Invasion Roswell was literally one of the slowest movies that I have ever seen on SyFy. A typical SyFy film accomplishes more in 10 minutes than Invasion Roswell did in 85 minutes. Between the slow pace, the predictable storyline, and the uninteresting characters, there really weren’t many opportunities for Invasion Roswell to actually be entertaining.
As a result, my tweets suffered. Usually, I think I’m a pretty lively force when it comes to live-tweeting SyFy films but, when it came to Invasion Roswell, I found myself struggling to stay awake.
To put it another way, I thought Heebie Jeebies was bad until I saw Invasion Roswell.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
When I was little, my family very briefly lived in New Mexico. However, we were in Carlsbad and, as a result, I don’t think we ever met any aliens. Then again, we were citizens of New Mexico for only a few months so maybe we could have met some aliens if we had just stuck around long enough. I guess that’s just going to have to be one of life’s mysteries.
Otherwise, there were no “Oh my God! Just like me!” moments in Invasion Roswell. Maybe someday, when I’m as old as Denise Crosby, I’ll be able to relate to this film.
Lessons Learned
I can forgive a lot of things but I cannot forgive dullness.