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Boring

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This movie was actually better than I had anticipated. I mean, a sci-fi western movie, not really the best of settings in my book. But still, "High Plains Invaders" manage to surprise me and keep me thoroughly entertained.The story is pretty much straight out of the "how-to-make-a-sci-fi-movie" book. Robotic aliens have come to Earth in search for some materials to harvest, in this case uranium, and their existence collide with the local residents in the area, here being a town set in the mid-late 1800's. Of course the aliens have far superior technology and are overcome with the humans. Duh! "High Plains Invaders" actually have quite good CGI effects, of course, it is not in the likes of "Sky Line", "Battle: Los Angeles", and such blockbuster budgets, but still, they did manage to pull it off quite well. The aliens were nicely made and nicely animated, though a tad too much a rip-off of the bugs in "Starship Troopers".When I watched this movie, I didn't realize James Marsden was in it, and when I did see him I was trying to figure out just who he was, because his face was familiar, though I couldn't remember his name. And I was trying to sort out if it really was the guy playing Spike on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" show, just in an older, more mature version. And it was. And I must say, he was really good in this movie. I think it is actually the only thing I have seen him in aside from "Buffy". Aside from Marsden, then the movie had some good enough performances from the actors that was in the movie.Consider this a "poor man's" "Cowboys & Aliens" if you will. A great enough movie, though with a very mainstream and predictable storyline. You know how the movie will end as soon as you play it. But still, it is worth a watch and it is entertaining. "High Plains Invaders" would actually be a good warm-up movie before sitting down to watch "Cowboys & Aliens", just to get you in that sci-fi/western combo mood.

James ("Spike" from Buffy) Marsters heads a cast of several in this 2009 entry in the Cowboys vs Aliens genre. Possibly it is the first? It is certainly a couple of years ahead of the big budget 2011 movie which bears the Cowboys vs Aliens name, and bears an amusingly cute name of its own.Being a SyFy channel movie, the production budget is not huge, which makes it gratifying to see how effectively it has been used. The movie is well structured and paced, the CGI aliens (armour plated scorpions with guns instead of stings) are well designed and surprisingly convincing, the action is decent, the acting is respectable, and the look of the thing gives an impression of production values, even if the location is somewhat under-populated.Not bad at all.

It's more difficult to review a movie that is abysmal than wonderful because there's just so much that's bad it's hard to decide how to begin. The dialog was infantile. Not only was the writing cliché and trite, it was obvious that the writer had never seen a western let alone ever heard anyone who actually spoke with an authentic western accent and dialect. Possibly the most horrid aspect of this terrible writing took the form of the character "Rose" whose ludicrous dialog mixed with laughable acting made for a character of pure comedy, but it wasn't supposed to be funny.The story line was sophomoric, moronic even. The plot was as thin as tissue and weaker than a ghost town's watered down whiskey. The timing of the expository statements were so in-your-face that one watching could only believe that the writer had the impression that everyone in the audience was incapable of understanding anything over second grade information. Saying it was insulting is an insult to the word insulting.The guns were a horrible anachronism. The style if six shooters used in the movie wasn't in place in the "Wild West". The only consolation is that the guns matched era of the dialog which is modern, though stupid.This movie is the clearest case of "let's make money as quickly as possible" I've ever seen. Utter crap. I wouldn't have finished watching it but my eyes were glued to the screen as if I were watching a horrible accident on TV and couldn't look away.

OK, now first off this is a movie set in a 1800's mining community in Colorado.About 20 mins into the film a 50's era Saturday night special is produced by the female bounty hunter character....umm OK....this wasn't the worst thing as about an hour into the film a few NICKEL PLATED COLT PYTHONS pop up!?!?! i mean really folks..whomever the weaponsmaster was on this one failed.Also the creatures(they look very good but the animators re ran too many of the same animations)are seemingly bulletproof accept for a small inch opening in their FACE which they widen to about 2 feet when they go to eat...not a hard target at all for someone with a 357 magnum...which brings me to our next talk point...45 mins or so into the film the main chars hold up in the sherrifs dept to escape the creatures where they then break into the sheriff's gun case and retrieve a few shotguns and winchester lever action rifles which were all well placed for the era....but the point is NONE OF THE PEOPLE LEAVE THE BUILDING WITH ANY RIFLES WHEN THEY RUN! the rest of the movie is a pistol extravaganza when there are higher caliber and more accurate weapons just a few feet away...The acting was OK for what the actors had to work with....the director seems to want us to believe there were no ugly women in the old west...there's a thin sub plot of uranium mining and radiation poisoning but thats not here or there.Also some odd voice overs were poorly mixed into the soundtrack...overall an odd film with a strange premise but watchable.