For better and for worse, this 1996 megahit is an archetypal 50s alien-invasion/disaster movie, though it contains dollops of Dr. Strangelove (without the 60s irony) and Star Wars (with equal nostalgia for old movie tropes). After invading bug-eyed monsters reduce New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and assorted unseen world capitals to rubble, a black and a Jew (Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum) set out to give humanity another chance. The earnestness, the effects, and the notion of a whole world forgetting its differences to defeat a common foe carry a certain charm, but like the U.S., this movie is so hamstrung trying to represent the whole worldor anything outside its own bordersthat it pretty nearly gives up at the start. Otherwise this is overlong but watchable. Roland Emmerich directed from a script he wrote with Dern Devlin; with Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid, Robert Loggia, and Bill Pullman as the U.S. president. PG-13, 145 min. (JR)