Know I'm late to the party, but I saw District 9 the other day, and I thought it was very good. Like a few people here I did think that the apartheid point was hammered home a bit, but I guess I only really felt that because of the setting.
I was very offended by the casting decisions (all 'good' or at least morally grey characters were white, and all of the muti gang were black - maybe this latter part was realistic, but I wouldn't know) as well as the stylistic decision to subtitle everything the muti gang leader said. I tried staring at the top of the screen while he spoke, and it was perfectly clear. My girlfriend suggested that it was done because that kind of documentary always does sub heavy accents, but for me that doesn't wash, because in the 'live action' segments he was still subbed. I was kind of shocked that a film trying to make that kind of point could still screw up so badly when it came to human characters.
For those reasons, and also because of the slightly cheesy 'action' sequence towards the end (very good, but dragged on and was a little OTT) I'd say it was good, but not amazing. It's always thrilling to see something original though, and this certainly was.
With the cat food point, I couldn't help wondering if there was some substance in there that they weren't getting from all the meat they were being sold. We don't really know much about their world, but it wouldn't seem too far-fetched to suggest that the 'prawns' were healthier when they ate fish.
As far as their seeming inertia goes, the documentary section near the start did make the point that all the senior command seemed to have been killed by disease, and that the refugees were the hardier 'drone' types. Christopher never seemed like one of these (otherwise how would he have had the missing 'part'?) but it was never really explained how many of the refugees were 'thinkers' and whether the human assessment of them was accurate. I would assume it was supposed to be, since it was an anthropologist who made the statement, and also since although he was callous, Wikas, and others around him, knew enough about 'prawns' to understand their language nearly fluently.
Did anybody else wonder whether the corpse Christopher found was of his friend? It was burnt badly, so we couldn't see if it was unusually coloured like he was, but he did seem to single out the corpse, and to take it very personally. Obviously it all was a bit personal, but any of the things in that room could have been offensive to him.
Wish they'd told us 'Christopher's' real name. I know humans wouldn't have been able to pronounce it, but even Splash managed it.
*~Pips~*