Wing Commander

Like the video game, Wing Commander chronicles the interstellar war between the Confederate earthlings and the Kilrathi, an evil alien race. Game aficionados will appreciate the references to the corridors and space-time distortions the soldiers travel through; non-fans will want more context.

Set in the year 2564, the film begins when fighter pilots Chris Blair (Freddy Prinze Jr.) and Todd Marshall (Matthew Lillard) are sent to another space station, where they find a hardened group of heroin-chic Confederates who appear to have just walked off a Calvin Klein runway. Chris and Todd try to bring humanity to the group -- mostly by wooing the far-from-helpless female soldiers in some forced love scenes. Despite the mediocre special effects and cliché'd characters (once again a rookie hears, "I fought with your father -- he was a good man"), Wing Commander incorporates a few new twists on the space-movie genre.

-- Sarah Curtis