It's that time of the semester...

It's that time of the semester when my life goes haywire with all the work I need to be doing and am either doing or assiduously avoiding. So in my down time I keep trying to come up with a satisfactory way to review The Host, which has been out for nearly a month now, but this is the danger of trying to review a movie based on a book you enjoyed: you can't help but criticize casting choices and edits of significant moments in the book. The trouble with adapting The Host for the big screen is that so much of the book constitutes an inner dialog between the main characters, who happen to be a young woman and the alien that has possession of her body.

Wow. That sounded weird.

Allow me to summarize: The Host  is the story of a love quadrangle. Aliens have taken over the earth, and they have ended war, famine, epidemics, crime, pollution, and bigotry. In taking over the earth, the aliens (called "souls") have taken over human bodies. They are a parasitic species that requires a host in order to live.

Let me take this moment to say that Stephenie Meyer must have read or watched or otherwise been inspired by K. A. Applegate's Animorphs. Just saying.

In The Host, an alien takes over the body of a woman who has been on the run from the souls for the past several years. She (Melanie), unlike most humans, stuck around to argue with the alien who took over her body. Melanie fiercely protects her memories of her boyfriend and her younger brother, but eventually Wanderer (the soul) finds out. Melanie's intense love for her brother and boyfriend eventually color Wanderer's views to the point that Wanderer begins to sympathize with humans, going so far as to cooperate with Melanie to locate her brother (Jamie) and boyfriend (Jared).

Apparently, humans have much stronger emotions and physical drives than most of the other sentient species in the universe. So THAT'S why Riker hit on every female-esque person he met in Next Gen. Long-term mystery solved, right? :-)

Upon finding Jamie and Jared in a small community of renegade humans, Wanderer faces discrimination and attempts on her life as she learns how to live with humans and falls in love with one of the humans; however, Melanie is still very present in Wanderer's mind, still very much in love with Jared, and Melanie's feelings and body chemistry very much affect Wanderer, causing her to half-fall in love with Jared, too, while building a relationship with Ian (one of the renegade humans). If that weren't enough drama, there is an alien (the Seeker) who is pursuing Wanderer/Melanie, and hiding out in a mountainous desert isn't exactly easy.

Overall, the movie stayed true to the plot of the book, though the tunnels were too well-lit, the principle characters were oddly-cast (Jared and Ian too lanky, Jamie too young, Melanie too pale, and the Seeker too blond to match their character descriptions), and the screenwriters felt it was more plausible to have Wanderer drive all the way across Texas from southern Louisiana (because of course Melanie has a fake southern accent to differentiate her from Wanderer) rather than from southern California to wind up in the desert of either New Mexico or Arizona. The minor characters (Jeb and Maggie in particular) did an excellent job.

That being said, the movie did have heart. In that emo sort of way of one of the more believable alien love-triangles I've seen. I'll plan on buying it on DVD.

Oh, and the special effects do not necessitate going to the theaters for this one. It'll be just as good on DVD.