This lightweight but amiably daft science-fiction comedy was pitched as Ghost Busters (an earlier Ivan Reitman smash) meets Men in Black. Though it shares those films' laid-back performances, tongue-in-cheek approach and cute special-effects creations, it lacks some of their wit and sparkle. Fortunately, David Duchovny and Orlando Jones (as college professors), Seann William Scott (as an aspiring fireman) and Julianne Moore (as a government scientist) lay on the comic charm, and the loose Darwinian concept allows for an entertainingly mad menagerie of regenerated digital creatures. However, it says a lot about the evolution of sci-fi cinema since the 1950s that Reitman's return to the genre is so reliant on computer-generated visuals and obvious scatological humour.

A comedy that follows the chaos that ensues when a meteor hits the Earth carrying alien life forms that give new meaning to the term "survival of the fittest." David Duchovny, Orlando Jones, Seann William Scott, and Julianne Moore are the only people standing between the aliens and world domination... which could be bad news for the Earth.