'Invasion' just warms up story, can't make it cook

Call it the Hollywood Virus or call it what you will, but there's only one explanation for "The Invasion."

The film -- a remake of a remake of a remake of a screen adaptation of a magazine serial -- is all the proof we need that America's artistic imagination is shrinking. It's also a sad testament to the corporate world's refusal to take risks, even in businesses built on them.

"The Invasion" is merely the latest stab at a decades-old story hatched by Jack Finney in Collier's magazine. Finney later took his magazine serial and turned it into a novel, which is what "The Invasion" is supposedly based on.

But moviegoers can't seriously be expected to view the film sans recollections of the 1956 and 1978 versions of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or even the lesser-known 1993 film "Body Snatchers." Each of those pictures share the same plot, and it goes something like this. Alien meanies are attempting to take over Earth by controlling human bodies " one by one. The folks who haven't been assimilated are, naturally, freaked out and fight back. But the battle becomes increasingly difficult as alien numbers grow.

Admittedly, it's a pretty good story, which is why it inspired a novel and four films. The question is why we need yet another version today. And the answer, again, is a lack of imagination and a risk-averse movie industry.

Why, after all, should a studio spend millions on films about big fat Greek weddings and Blair witches, when it can stick Nicole Kidman in a see-through T-shirt and a time-tested script and watch the money roll in?

The answer is so moviegoers can have a fresh and original experience at the theater, but that's not what American filmmaking is about these days.

Oh well, enough griping. As remakes " or adaptations " or whatever Warner Brothers is calling this film go, "The Invasion" isn't bad. Kidman is great as Carol Bennell, a psychiatrist who learns that the world is being invaded by a virus that her son, Oliver (Jackson Bond), is! immune to. Sadly, she and Oliver were separated because the youngster was spending the weekend with his father, Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam), when the aliens attacked. Conveniently, Tucker is not only head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but one of the first folks nailed by the virus. So, he uses his power to speed the American indoctrination process. And he makes a pretty good foil for Carol, who is desperately trying to find Oliver. She has help in the form of a handsome physician named Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig), and although they're just pals, he's crazy about her. That gives viewers the requisite blockbuster romance, and because Craig and Kidman have nice chemistry this version of "Body Snatchers" is as good as any. One wonders, however, if good is really acceptable these days. After all, movie tickets run nearly $10. Because the story is a retread, everybody pretty much knows what's going to happen. And because this is 2007, we also know to expect a number of gross-out horror sequences -- most involve aliens puking on uninfected humans.

Most people won't expect the film's rather subversive argument that the aliens are actually the good guys, but this comes late in the film and is relatively awkwardly executed. So, we're left with a well-acted movie that is entertaining yet endlessly predictable.

If "The Invasion" were a virus, it would be the commonest of colds.

In other words, director Oliver Hirschbiegel simply hijacked the body of pre-existing Hollywood blockbuster.