Opens May 12, 2000

Big hair, big boots, big make-up, big dud.

One man must lead his people out of slavery against the alien conquerors in Battlefield Earth, the John Travolta-starring sci-fi behemoth based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard. Lunked together by generic sci-fi plotting, connected with dollops of mythological themery, and hardened by massive ironworks design, Battlefield Earth is a trudging mess of a movie.

In the sci-fi universe, Hubbard is credited with being a serviceable purveyor of pulp sci-fi, churning out massive tomes, crammed with sci-fi components and mythical constructs. Essentially, Battlefield Earth is heaped with a bit of everything and wobbles sometimes ridiculously through its pat progressions, and when stumped, or going to deep-think modes, simply makes nutty leaps of logic, descending into a Top Gun mode for instance and then back into a direct dive into Planet of the Apes. It's all pretty disjointed and more than a bit scatterbrained. Rather than being a slice of entertaining pulp sci-fi, this murky movie is, more akin, to pummeled sci-fi. And, it takes itself oh so seriously, without even a wink or nod, endearing traits in Lucasland.

Alas, Battlefield Earth is one of those big-design projects that attempts to say it all about man's relation to the universe, and under the weight of its ambitions, winds up being both overextended and simplistic. It's as if the entire sci-fi bag of themes and tricks has been tossed into the cinematic cauldron and spewed out into format by a nouveau computer system.

Battlefield Earth's storyline clomps along the general form of the slave people rising up against their evil oppressors, the Psycholos, an evil alien species, who conquered the Earth, well, just about now. Presumably, they used a lot of atomic weaponry because they accomplished the feat in nine minutes and left a stream of radiation in their rampage. They came, they saw, they enslaved the few humans that survived who had scattered to the higher altitudes, up yonder around Aspen and places like that, because of the bad air.

These human survivors are pretty primordial, stalking small prey, and generally look like Anglo Rastafarians. Life is hard for these survivors, depicted here as living the same kind of life the Apache led in the early westerns. Yet, their jewelry is more interesting than that of the Apache, owing to the radiation. These tribes of humans must breathe through nose strings, a form of homemade air purifier. If you took a western string tie and clamped it onto your nose and let it drop below your chin and then looped it up to your temple, you'd have one. Needless to say, it's a distraction to see everyone wearing these dopey strings and ultimately makes every piece of the film's dreary dialogue seem even dumber.

The plot centers on the personal dual between the leader of the human pack, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler (no relation to Johnny B Goode) and the Psychlo's ultra-evil chief of security Terl (John Travolta), a scheming slime with manifest-destiny complexes. Although Battlefield Earth tromps through the general paces of a rebellion scenario, the plotting is do dunderheaded that it doesn't even navigate well on a simple connect-the-plot-dots level. Indeed, the dialogue itself resembles that of an old-time, English radio soap opera set amid the nastiness of the high-colonial days. In this Battlefield, the characters continually stand around and insult, connive, and bark. It peaks intellectually and comedically when Terl calls Jonnie "rat brain. " Said witticism is voiced repeatedly and it does not improve with repetition and, sprinkled with a load of anachronistic sayings, renders Battlefield Earth as an ear strain.

Alas, the narrative is more akin to what would happen if one were playing on a science-fiction game board, and rolls of the dice could thrust the story and path into entirely different dimensions. Mainly, the scenes seem concocted just to show off the hardware, and, lo, often these are embarrassments: The handguns, for instance, are merely steely versions of those toys that shoot out ping-pong balls. Still, there is some interesting eye candy. The hulking helicopters used by the evil Pscychlos are daunting and credibly inventive, as if Apache helicopters had once mated with municipal garbage trucks.

Because the narrative dots are so disconnected, and the tromping and stomping so numbingly predictable, one comes to regard Battlefield Earth as, at best, a somewhat interesting montage of sci-fi wallpaper. Visually, it's, a combo Metropolis meets Planet of the Apes. Alas, no Raquel Welch in this male-heavy opus

Although the neo-expressionistic backdrops usually provide entertaining distractions, the costumes themselves are just plain dopey, a witless compendium of over-worn sci-fi ware. While it's necessary to make the evil guys in this sort of universe look, well, evil, the Psychlos are just plain doltish looking. With their steely ski boots for thumping around, the bad Psychlos are outfitted with a ragtag of wardrobe, part baseball catcher and part Crusader. Worse, their Rastafarian dos are cluttered with baubles that look like leftovers from Cher's early Vegas days. It doesn't make for a lot of menace.

It's hard to watch John Travolta with a hairstyle that Bob Marley might have concocted had he lost his mind and decided to tour with Diana Ross. Overall, the characters have no more dimension than their costume design. Psychologically, they are anorexic one-dimensional who only bark, pontificate, or snipe, according to their character stripes. The good guy, Jonnie Goodboy Tyler is distinguished mainly because he's the only human who has a clean face, other than this girlfriend who shows up at the beginning and the end.

Credit director Roger Christian, however, for vaulting this load into a well-paced trajectory and credit cinematographer Giles Nuttgens for some kinetic shot compositions. Also, slab in a heap of praise for composer Emil Cmiral's stentorian musical score, which heightens the story, but, alas, is not loud enough to drown out the dialogue.