Independence Day

Empire Kim Newman

Like "2001," "Star Wars" and "Jurassic Park," it ups the special effects stakes and gets closer to putting on screen the images you've had in your mind while reading epic sci-fi.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The aliens, meanwhile, are a fabulously nasty lot of slimy, tentacled, malevolent telepaths, but all their superior technology is no match for our red, white and blue ingenuity. Take that, space bullies!

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.

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.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

With its hackneyed plot, feeble attempts at characterization, and predictable finale, the second half of Independence Day becomes an extremely dull and lifeless affair.

Newsweek David Ansen

The dialogue is tacky, the characters stock and the special effects no improvement on anything George Lucas did 20 years ago.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The cutting-edge perfection of effects in Cameron and Spielberg films is replaced here by work that looks more homemade, particularly toward the end in some faintly cheesy composite shots.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Once you get past the admittedly breathtaking shots of our national landmarks being turned into kindling, the rest of the film is a tired and empty two hours of feel-good patriotism and oddly cast characters.

Washington Post Kevin McManus

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.

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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Overlong but watchable.

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."

Salon.com Scott Rosenberg

A colossally dumb epic that happily traffics in third-hand imagery and ideas while feeding its audience maintenance level doses of humor, adrenaline and spectacle.