In most movies that involve a monster of some sort, you usually get a story that revolves around one type of creature or ghost or alien. Rarely, a monster movie will have two or three different varieties of creature, but in the science-fiction comedy Evolution, you get an entire ecosystem’s worth of imaginative creatures. Ivan Reitman, most well known for directing Ghostbusters, took a serious and straight-forward script about an unusual alien invasion and turned it into a humorous outing in his own style. It begins with a meteor from the unknown reaches of deep space crashing to earth in the Arizona right on top of Wayne’s (Seann William Scott’s) car, turning it into a smoking hole in the ground. Ira Kane (David Duchovny) a professor at the local community college finds out about the meteor impact and suggests to his friend and geology professor Harry Block (Orlando Jones) that they check it out. Ira takes a sample from the meteor and discovers it contains nitrogen-based single-celled organisms of extraterrestrial origin. Upon showing Harry his discovery, the organisms have changed from single to multi-celled organisms. After a return trip, this time toting some students along under the guise of a field trip, they find that the tunnel in which the meteor has crashed into is completely overrun with the ever evolving creatures, this time having developed as far as flatworms and fungus that convert our atmosphere into gases that the creatures can metabolize. However, just when these two think they have the greatest discovery in history on their hands, the U.S. Military swoops in to take over the operation.
It turns out that Ira used to work for General Woodman, (Ted Levine) the guy in charge of this operation. Although Ira and Harry try to get in on the investigation, Woodman and one of the scientists involved with the project named Dr. Allison Reed (Julianne Moore) successfully bar Ira from the project due to his previous failures as a government scientist. While all this is going on, those alien creatures have turned the tunnels under Glen Canyon into their own constantly developing home. Many of the monsters are using the mine shafts to escape into the surrounding areas and have a few run-ins with the locals. There is a four-legged fish that jumps out of the water to attack a man at a golf course, a frumpy little frog that bites some woman with a mouth on its tongue, and a flying dinosaur type monster that becomes tolerant to Earth’s atmosphere and lays siege to a mall. It is here that Ira and Harry meet up with Wayne and try to contain the rampaging aliens, loading up with shotguns to take out the flying dinosaur thing. The appeal of this film, to me anyway, comes form the sheer variety and creativity of the creatures being showcased. The core premise of the story lends itself to the writers and special effects team creating a huge number of monster-based gags and set pieces that are each unique and escalating in scale through the movie’s running time. The actual plot of the movie, however, has some logical holes in it and the comedy is hit or miss most of the time. The actors do a good job in their respective roles, but it feels like we are being rushed through the story at break-neck speed, like there were too many ideas that were squeezed into the script. The ending is also hard to believe, as the solution to the alien problem is entirely based on a hunch that just happens to work. But still, it’s hard to find more monster bang for your buck than in this film.
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