under appreciated movie

Evolution had an 80 million dollar budget. It didn't even gross half it's budget at the box office.

I remember the promotion for this movie was pretty big. Why didn't more people want to see it? What was it up against? Were it's stars simply nowhere near big enough box office draws?

My Dad took my brother and I to see this at the cinemas when I was 13 and I really enjoyed it and my Dad said he thought it was pretty good as well. Not long after that we saw Jurassic Park 3 at the cinemas and I remember my Dad commenting "This was so much better than that other movie with the aliens we saw not long ago, that one was just silly"

While I enjoy some of the comedy in Evolution, the humor is kind of hit and miss and it often gets a little too silly.

I watched Evolution again very recently and it's not a bad movie but had much bigger potential I think. It was originally written as a dead-serious sci-fi thriller that the director had re-written into a farcical Ghostbusters-like comedy. Somewhere in-between would've been the best way to do it I reckon. I thought David Duchovny and Orlando Jones had good chemistry and were both funny and likable but they really did joke around a bit too much. They should've dialed the humor down a few notches, Jones in-particular.

Like Roger Ebert noted in his review, the aliens just aren't that threatening or hostile and you get the idea that our hero's should probably be trying to help and protect them rather than chase them around with shotguns.

The only real threat from the Aliens up until the end is one pterodactyl-like alien that's birthed outside the cave and flies to a shopping center to wreak havoc which just involves knocking stuff over in all the department stores as opposed to killing anyone. None of the aliens were really any threat. One alien supposedly ate someone off-screen and the scene is just played for laughs.

Despite all that the movie still manages to build up the interest of the aliens and what's going to happen once they start adapting to our atmosphere and taking over and before any of that can happen the movie moves into the final act where they plan to wipe them out for good. The first hour was reasonably well built up and needed another hour to showcase the aliens wreaking havoc but instead it moved way too quickly into the "we have to destroy them now" finale stage.

Had the movie found a better balance between the serious nature of an alien invasion and the comedic elements employed and had a running length of closer to 2 hours to better explore the aliens then this could've been a much better movie. As it is, it's a fun little comedy about aliens and not much more.

Thank you! Personally I love this movie it's so fun and the aliens are very cool looking I'm not sure why it gets panned immediately without the benefit of the doubt. Also The three leads were perfect in this movie!

Yup. It's a funny movie.

Comedy is very subjective hence why even though the critics didn't favor this, most of the general audience does. Everyone has their own individual sense of humor. So I also think this is very underrated and quite funny.

Fun film with a good plot and likable characters. And most impressively, no one really stole the show. It was a great cast collaboration.

I loved seeing Gregory Itzin. Had only watched him in 24 until this movie.

I don't really remember ever seeing any trailers or commercials for Evolution, and I don't think I've ever seen it on television in the years since. As far as I know the first I'd seen or heard of it was when I encountered a wall of copies of it at Blockbuster when it first came out on home video. I'm not sure why I rented it, I wasn't really a die-hard fan of any of the guys in the movie. I was vaguely aware of Orlando Jones, I didn't regularly watch MadTV but I'd seen it once or twice. I wasn't a very big fan of Seann William Scott or the American Pie Movies. I did kind of like Duchovny though, I didn't watch The X-Files but I'd seen him on SNL a couple of times and thought he was hilarious. I think it was something on the box saying it was from the director of Ghostbusters which made me grab the random movie. But I enjoyed it and watched it multiple times before returning it. And have rented it several times over the years and later downloaded it. It's not perfect, but I found it entertaining. I enjoyed the strange chemistry between the three leads and found Duchovny hilarious from start to finish. I also got a kick out of Ted Levine. I still laugh out loud at the courtroom scene when Harry calls the judge "your majesty" and later accidentally slaps Ira in the face. It's just a fun movie, doesn't take itself seriously at all, has some pretty cool (still) effects and some really funny moments. I don't know why people don't like it more, I've read several comments and reviews on places like Netflix which seem to fault it for not being as great as Ghostbusters, even though (in my opinion) the majority of movies aren't.

"Dan Marino should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell. Would you like a cookie son?"

I like it.