Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 32% (Critics) / 37% (Audience)
Directed By: Roland Emmerich
Written By: Nicolas Wright , James A. Woods , Dean Devlin , Roland Emmerich , Jamie Vanderbilt , James Vanderbilt
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson and Morgan Freeman
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Synopsis: Two decades after the first Independence Day invasion, Earth is faced with a new extra-Solar threat. But will mankind’s new space defenses be enough? – (Source)

The Good:
I idea of a planet full of survivors whose own planets were destroyed by the evil ID4 aliens is an intriguing one and in anyone else’s hands but Emmerich and Devlin it would be a movie I would be eager to watch.
I also liked the character of Dikembe Umbutu and would have loved to have seen more time spent on the Umbutu army’s ground war against the aliens.

The Bad:
Gosh, where to start? The pacing was rushed, no one did anything that made any sense from the supposedly genius scientists to the veteran military men to the leaders of the free world and even the freaking alien invaders. being stupid seemed to be the defining characteristic of everyone in this movie.
And who made the decision to have the good guy aliens design be a total copy of the Pokemon ball?
And why even bother bringing Vivica A. Fox back if she was just going to be used in the way the film used her?
And why did they chicken out when it came to killing Julius Levinson (Judd Hirsch)? Did someone really think that continuing the nebbishy old Jewish father stereotype was crucial to the success of this movie?
And why exactly would the alien queen leave the safety of the mothership to expose herself to the Earth defenses when she could have just as easily sent her soldiers to scoop up the Pokemon alien?
Also how exactly do you make a movie about aliens invading the Earth end up being so deathly boring?

The Ugly:
The fact that the Jake (played by Liam Hemsworth) character even existed is a mystery to me. Everything about the character of Jake should have just been a part of the Dylan Hiller (played by Jessie T. Usher) character. I have plenty of theories why the legacy character of Dylan was made into a bland second banana while the Jake character was given more character development, a romantic interest, a sidekick and more heroic moments but that would require a thinkpiece on race and action movie heroes that I really don’t feel like writing.

Final Verdict: The first INDEPENDENCE DAY was an entertaining take on the disaster movie formula, this sequel is a sloppy, boring attempt at epic sci-fi adventure that falls flat in every way possible. Its just a loud, overly stuffed waste of 2 hours.

Grade: D