The Faculty: Review By slysnide

We've all seen those old flicks about young kid's teachers being from outer space, and this time, it's not much new. But instead this transcends the young age group for a more preferred teenage crowd with known actors in order for us to take it more seriously. While it accomplishes that, there's not much else to make it stand out among all the other flicks of this nature.

Elijah Wood is the reject who believes in all this alien stuff when no one else listens to him, which is a calling card of such films, while Josh Hartnett is the popular guy that slowly gets drawn into believing the impossible, and of course, taking charge of the situation. Usher, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, and Shawn Hatosy play the clueless stragglers in the group which consists of the jock, the bitch, the goth, the idiot, and the newbie whom all take a while to come together in the film. And with that comes the all too familiar love story intertwined, as well as the fact that none of said side characters provide much to the story. Though even more familiar is the leader's crush on the antagonist Famke Janssen, who's accompanied by Salma Hayek, Jon Stewart, Bebe Neuwirth, and Robert Patrick. So all of the antagonists are known, while most of the protagonists are complete unknowns. Yet unfortunately for the audience, the film focuses more on the partially amusing teenage protagonists. These things could easily have been improved upon, despite that it was a good movie.

Robert Rodriguez may be known for flicks like his “Mexico Trilogy” and “GrindHouse,” but he's already transcended genres with his "Spy Kids" trilogy, so this film lies in the middle category of teenage angst...with aliens. Given how well Rodriguez does with these types of films, then it's better that he took the reigns here rather than an unknown who'd most likely get this to be a WB original movie, if there is such a thing. So while all the actors were decent in their roles as you'd expect from a film like this, it was still lacking in suspense which should've received more runtime than the trivial romantic issues, for had Elijah Wood remained the leader throughout the film, then that would work, but by giving the relatively uninteresting side protagonists more screen time to support their "good ideas" (as would typically happen in such a situation if your main character is the outcast) then any romantic subplot doesn't work out nicely; especially when you deviate from your main character in the middle chunk of the film through to the climax. It just doesn't work. Though oddly enough, this flick still turned out to be decent, though ultimately, not worth a purchase.