Invasion of the body Snatchers (1978)

Stars: Donald Sutherland, Jeffrey Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, Brooke Adams
Plot: Remake of 1950s classic. When strange seeds drift to earth from space, mysterious pods begin to grow and invade San Francisco, replicating the city's residents one body at a time.

Movie Structure
Act I - 40 minutes - Brooke Adams feels her husband isn't the "real Geoffrey" and that people are changing. Sutherland and Nimoy (Kibner the pyschiatrist) tell her otherwise.
Act II - 40 minutes - Goldblum and Sutherland find half-formed pod persons and they try to convince Nimoy, and the SF Mayor that Pods are taking over.
Act III - 35 minutes - Realizing that the police and almost everyone else is a Pod, Sutherland and Adams try to leave SF. They try to fight off the Pods before the end.

What Pauline Kael Thought
She loved it, declaring the movie "more sheer fun than any movie since Jaws or Carrie". She was "laughng and scared" even before the titles came on.  It was the American "Movie of the Year" an instant "SF Classic".  And she ended her review:  "It may be the best movie of its kind ever made."

Per Kael: 

• Script has some of the funniest lines ever heard on the screen. 
• Characters - believable and likable. 
• Brooke Adams was Strong and resilient with a "Loopy sense of humor" and an "odd attractiveness"  while Goldblum "ignores his handsomness and delivers his own goofy timing".
• Special effects were amazing.  Score  = Dazzling. 

Funniest Dialogue:

Goldblum: His ideas are garbage. His books are Garbage.
Woman: How can you say that about a man like Kibner.
Goldblum: Not a man like Kibner. I'm saying it about Kibner. He dashes a book off every six months.
Takes me six months to write one line.
Woman: Why?
Goldblum: 'Cos I pick each word individually.

What I thought
Padded, often sluggish, Science Fiction Thriller, that takes a long time to get interesting. While I loved the location shots of 1978 San Francisco, setting the plot in a big city deadened the impact of characters seeing others turn pod. We're further distanced from the action by an obviously bored Donald Sutherland (often looking like drowned rat) and a dull, muted Leonard Nimoy.  We're never really given a reason to care about our "Heroes", and when they turned "Pod Evil" my reaction was "Well, that's interesting".

The chase scene in the '56 version was engaging since we not only liked Kevin McCarthy, he had to get away to warn everyone else. In this version, it seems everyone in San Francisco from the Mayor on down have been turned into Pods. And Sutherland has already warned the Feds. So, he's only saving himself, and frankly, I didn't care that much about him.

Further, the movie, despite being 115 minutes, actually has less plot than the the 56 version. We get too many talky scenes that go nonwhere, too many tensionless chases, and too many people we don't care about. Kael claimed the script was "full of wit", which means we weren't watching the same movie. The films 2nd funniest dialogue relates to a rat turd in someone's soup.

Rewachability Factor:  Low. The movie is incredibly boring the 2nd time round.  Exceptions:  The best scenes (see below) still hold up.  As does the Book party with Goldblum getting off a few funny lines. 

Best Scenes

1. Sutherland goes to sleep and a pod plant sends a shoot up his sleeve. He later wakens with 4 pod people next to him.
2. Sutherland: "How do you know my name. I never told you my name!"
3. Nimoy and Goldblum capture Sutherland and Adams to turn them Pod.

Worst Scene
Sutherland destroys a Pod "factory" ala Rambo with nothing more than a fire ax.