Let's get ready to bumble: "Alien vs. Predator"

I now present to you Reason No. 304 to have HBO: There's no way in hell I would spend money to see "Alien vs. Predator" in the theater, nor would I use one of my precious Netflix spots to watch it on DVD. That leaves cable TV, and I recently succumbed to this pointless exercise of a movie that sounded good on paper ... 15 years ago.

Really, this "movie" actually was a video game five years ago, and it's not like there's a great track record of major motion pictures coming from the Nintendo ranks. (Although I understand "The English Patient" video game was awesome.) No question I enjoyed "Predator," "Alien" and "Aliens" as much as the next guy, but like I said ... if you wanted to capture the magic of those movies, you should have tried that when the first President Bush was in office.

Our "story," as it were, has a group of people journeying to Antarctica to investigate what appears to be a giant pyramid buried under the ice. It's a ragtag group, of course, with a bunch of no-names filling the roles of guide, archaeologist, engineer, bankroller, etc. True, we have Lance Henriksen in the mix, but that's almost sad. Not only does he look like he'd rather be anywhere else, but I'm positive he ended each day of shooting by going to his trailer, pouring a shot of cheap tequila -- Don Q usually works -- and muttering, "I don't need this. I was in 'Stone Cold,' dammit!"

Anyway, this pyramid turns out to be where the Predator race we know and love from their run-ins with Arnie and Danny -- that would be Glover in "Predator 2," which was f-ing robbed at Oscar time -- holds a hunt every 100 years. The hunted? The Aliens, thanks to an Alien queen the Predators keep on ice. But when things start to go awry, the humans find themselves caught in a war between the species.

The humans eventually pick a side, not that I cared what happened to them. Aside from Lance, we get Sanaa Lathan -- maybe best known for "Brown Sugar," "Love and Basketball" and as Wesley Snipes' mom in "Blade" -- and Tommy Flanagan, the dude with the scar on face who's made a career with bit parts in "Gladiator," "Braveheart" and "Face/Off" (no pun intended). Yeah, quite the honor roll.

It's all rather silly, and the special effects ease the pain only a bit. Sure, it's cool to see a horde of Aliens racing up the pyramid and overpowering the Predators a couple of thousand years ago. And who doesn't love a Predator catching a baby Alien when it springs from a human body? But as much as I enjoyed the movies that gave us these creatures, this battle royale pretty much sucks. Here's a hint, boys: It helps to actually care about one side in a fight if you're going to watch it for two hours. As Hudson from "Aliens" might say, "Game over, man! Game over!"