"Invasion" makes you want to hurl

As invasions go, this one's a Bay of Pigs.

It's not enough to say that the newest in the lineage of 1956's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" -- which includes the great 1978 remake and Abel Ferrara's respectable 1993 "Body Snatchers" -- got the recessive gene. It's such a laughable, scareless train wreck that you don't need to know the disastrous insider-baseball behind its production to hate it.

The beginning is familiar: Alien spores come to Earth -- this time via an exploded space shuttle; filmmakers better hope the damaged one currently in orbit doesn't go boom -- and turns humans into automatons. "My husband is not my husband," a patient (1978 vet Veronica Cartwright) complains to her psychiatrist, Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman).

Neither is Bennell's own husband -- well, her ex: a CDC man (Jeremy Northam) who was one of the first transformed. Absent for years, now he wants their little boy (Jackson Bond) for the weekend. His robotic delivery and movements -- more Conehead than pod -- drew laughs from the audience I was in.

But there are no pods in this version. The changed people infect others by ... wait for it ... throwing up in their faces. So instead of Pod-People we have Puke-People. And several chases in which victims are running from pursuers who want to catch them and vomit in their faces. A scene in which a late-night "census-taker" (Uh, land-shark!) dry-heaves at Bennell through a cracked door is funny enough. But an attack aboard a subway comes off more like the group-barfing scene in "Stand By Me" than anything horrific.

As the Puke-People begin to take over, Bennell must look emotionless (not hard with the cosmetic work Kidman's apparently had) to avoid detection, and enlist her smitten doctor pal (new Bond, Daniel Craig) to help rescue the boy -- who may hold the key to humanity's survival.

The movie was reportedly yanked from director Oliver Hirschbiegel (see his riveting "Das Experiment") and given to the Wachowski brothers ("The Matrix" trilogy), who rewrote nearly a third of it and had their "V for Vendetta" director, James McTeigue, do reshoots. So it was once even worse?

Whoever's responsible, time-disjointing editing at key points is ineffective and confusing. The quickly transformed world -- where India and Pakistan immediately disarm, the Iraq occupation abruptly stops and Bush takes a long shower with Chavez -- looks pretty good. (While the original was a Red Scare allegory, this one weakly tries and badly fails with some sort of medication reference. Attention, Paxil folks.) And the unbelievably lame, lazy, seemingly improvised wrap-up is cheaper than any I can remember from a '50s B-flick.

The good news is, there was no pod under my seat. Because I'm sure I nodded off.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259

or mrahner@seattletimes.com