Doctor Zoidberg is looking a bit worse for wear in District 9.

Stop the press! Aliens have come to Earth in District 9 and they have… diplomatic immunity!!

More precisely, an alien ship has stalled above Johannesburg. After months of it just floating there (and the rest of the world impatiently waiting for it to do something), the South Africans decide to blowtorch their way into the mysterious craft to find out who (or what) is inside.

On board they find hundreds of thousands of starving aliens. Not quite knowing what to do with them, the ‘prawns’ as they become known, get put into a holding camp called ‘District 9′ where they get fed and watered (much to the disgust of the locals). Unfortunately the prawns also have table manners that would make Waynetta Slob blush, so the camp quickly detoriorates into a massive alien slum. 20 years on, the locals have grown to hate the prawns. I know… crackers!

Most of the prawns aren’t very bright, but there is one – the errr, King Prawn, who has a cunning plan. When the South Africans decide to evict the aliens from District 9, you just know things won’t go smoothly when you’re talking about a prawn cocktail of humans versus aliens.

Now I realise that I’ve made that all sound a bit crap, which is actually far from the truth. District 9 has a mockumentary’ style that works quite well. There’s a few funny moments, some gross bits and there’s even a bit of ‘prawn porn’ going on which might be a cinema first. Anyway it mostly works – just ignore how the aliens and humans can understand each other fluently without actually speaking each others language. Rather amazingly, District 9 also only had a budget of $30 million. Pretty impressive result I reckon.

8/10.