Evolution isn’t bad, but it never completely evolves into a really good film. When a meteor lands near the community college where biologist Ira Kane, played by David Duchovny, and geologist Harry Block, played by Orlando Jones, work they find microscopic alien life forms living on and within the meteor. Even more amazing is the fact that these life forms are evolving at a geometric, and frightening, rate covering more evolutionary ground in days then Earth life forms covered in thousands of years. Soon what were a group of one-celled organisms has developed into a small, but rapidly spreading jungle of flora and fauna some of which become man-eaters even as the evolutionary process is still continuing. So when the government takes over with a high-handed manner and low IQ perspective they make things even worse and Ira and his friends have to risk everything; not to save the world, but to keep it from being completely re-made.

Ok, the good news first. Evolution, with its flying monsters, alien wildlife and man-eating creatures, has some absolutely terrific special effects. The four primary actors, David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Julianne Moore and Sean William Scott, all do excellent jobs despite some of the weak material they’re given. Duchovny and Jones have an especially good camaraderie with one another, enough that I’d like to see them together in another film, and Scott gives a performance that runs deeper then its air-head persona and which, with proper material to work with, could have been truly amazing. For example, check out the look on his face after he is forced to kill a humanoid looking alien. There’s a depth there that could have been built upon to absolutely excellent effect. And finally there are places in the film that are genuinely, laugh out loud funny. That was the good news.

The bad news is that, to begin with, Evolution never really comes together as a movie feeling instead like a series of vignettes where the characters jump from one comedy sketch to another. Next, though the plot of the film is terrific and has a lot of potential the script itself, with a few exceptions here and there, pretty much stank. Evolution can never decide if it is going to be a horror film with comedic overtones, ala Jaws or a comedy adventure and waffles unsuccessfully between these two genres. As for the dialogue David Duchovny excels at getting characters he plays to develop realistic relationships with other characters, but all of the conversations between Duchovny and Julianne Moore were both clumsy and clichéd. A weak, and unsuccessful, attempt is made at slapstick by having Ms. Moore’s character be the sort of klutz who regularly falls down or drops things, but instead of being funny it only serves to trivialize her character despite a good performance on her part. Things get even worse as the film runs out of steam near the end and begins to rely on literal toilet humor involving people getting farted on by and sucked up into an alien giant’s rectum. Finally, the Head and Shoulders tag on toward the end was weird and unnecessary, except perhaps, for the Head and Shoulders Company.

Evolution is worth seeing, but don’t get your hopes up because this is not a comedy of meteoric proportions.

Grade: B

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