Habitat (1997)

Awful - say it...AWWWW FULL...say it again. AWFUL.That's right - really awful.Maybe it's just me, but I found this to be ridiculously horrible.Something benignly insanely retarded on so many levels.This movie was also filmed in Quebec, but it's supposed to be the desert...yeah, how does that work? Low level drivel with little plot that makes sense and some nude shots which don't help improve the movie either.If you want to save the environment. light up a spliff and smoke it and watch something far better than this.

This is by far, without a doubt, unquestionably the best movie I have ever seen in my life! Do not listen to anything anyone else tells you, this movie is awesome and I have never been contradicted on this in person. Forget the fact that it is in the sci-fi section of movie stores (well, except that you have to go there to rent/buy it), this movie is a comedy. There is no way the writers of this movie could ever have intended it as anything but a comedy, the sets are outlandish, the special effects must have cost them a (small) handful of dollar bills, and the actors over-do everything to the point of hilarity. Not only is the premise of the movie entirely ridiculous even to the most outlandish of sci-fi writers, it makes statements contradictory to obvious, proven science and even contradicts itself in several scenes. If you haven't had a good laugh in a while and really need one, you are guaranteed to find it in this movie, as long as you don't take it seriously as a sci-fi movie.

Right off the bat it must be said that 'Habitat' is very poorly directed film, and as bad as the direction is the script (by Director Rene Daalder) is even worse. The script is so utterly derivative and over the top ridiculous that it's amazing the typewriter it was conceived on didn't explode in shame. It also contains some of the most astonishingly bad dialogue in recent years (The line "It's you isn't it? You're that one potato" deserves it's place in the bad dialogue hall of fame).The special effects are equally poor, most of the time looking like something out of a bad 1980's Duran Duran video...And then there's the performances.The term 'almost universally bad' springs to mind here. Balthazar Getty, Alice Krige and Chris Heyerdahl all act like they're in a coma, but compared to the rest of the cast thats a good thing. The rest of the cast ranger from truly bad (Bruce Mackay, Kris Holdenreid) to unbelievably irritating (Kenneth Welsh, Katherine Trowell, and Tcheky Karyo, who seems to have forgotten how to act altogether). In fact the only passable performance comes from Laura Harris, but even that's far from good.Not even so bad it's good, this is a painful experience to watch and is utter crud even for the most ardent (or hard up) sci-fi fan. Stupid in the extreme, this has absolutely nothing to recommend it other than a little exploitative nudity (and if you're truly that desperate rent a porno or a Troma film instead) this is the type of film making that makes Ed Wood seem like a genius in comparison. 99 minutes of your life that you will never get back, this is the very definition of a terrible film. Avoid (and thank me later).

OK, let's see if I get this right. In a future where the ozone layer has been depleted, a scientist moves his family out to a desert community where he turns the inside of his house into a lush rainforest that proceeds to grow out of control. Meanwhile, his son faces the slings and arrows of adjusting to life at his new high school where he is pushed around by bullies under the command of the sadistic P.E. teacher. Also, government agents who have deemed biological experiments illegal arrive to destroy the house. That about cover it?There's a pretty neat idea lurking around somewhere in this science fiction/ecological drama/haunted house/love story/teen drama, but it gets pulled in so many directions it just turns into a soupy mess.In fact, now that I think about it, the only thing that really stands out in my mind about this is a delightful skinny-dipping scene with Laura Harris, the cute blonde who would later star in the also lame "The Faculity".