Skyline - Did I watch the same film?

I’m just about to publish this review online and, before I give it an average rating, I can’t help but notice how many ‘1 star’ ratings it’s got.  I remember when ‘Skyline’ was released it being critically panned.  I waited a while to see it on DVD and, when I did, I was pleasantly surprised.

It’s about a load of alien spaceships that rock up over Earth one day (yes, let’s skip why no radar system actually detected their approach) and starts abducting the world’s population en masse.  Now, this is bad news for the average man on the street and even worse news if you’re residing in a Los Angeles skyscraper, for this is where our plucky group of heroes is going to make their last stand.
Okay, so they can hardly fight off a seemingly infinite number of spaceships, but they can possibly survive the destruction of mankind there.  It’s kind of a ‘siege movie’ where they play cat and mouse with one alien incursion after the next.  And it’s not that bad – well, not unless ask anyone apart from me apparently.

Most people agree that the special effects are pretty impressive and the destruction is well done.  I guess most people get annoyed by the characters.  They do tend to do one very silly thing after the next and there are a couple of bits in the movie (no spoilers here) that don’t really make that much sense if you think too hard about them.

What you have here is a movie that feels like a particularly high-budget made-for-TV movie.  If you think of it like that then you may just get something out of it.  Perhaps the reason I like it is because I was aware of the general hatred of if before I sat down to watch it, therefore my expectations were suitably lowered.

My girlfriend described it as ‘Jurassic Park with aliens’ – okay, there are some scenes where I can see where she’s coming from.  But I defy anyone to not find the scene with the Stealth bomber exhilarating!

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that