As the Nostalgic Critic put it, this is a film about how stereotypes about humans fight against stereotypes about aliens.
When I first saw it, I think it was 10 years old, it was absolutely incredible, it was as cool as it could be. But this perception of course was a feature of the era, hungry for visuals, plus the childish look always overestimates the assessment, and it then remains so for many people for life, hence dozens of short-sighted reviewers.
And if you look at all this with an adult eye without nostalgia, then I see a big-budget medley: a huge bunch of secondary characters, which are solid clichés, communicate cheerfully, while the theme of the invasion itself is not revealed at all. Evil aliens, as always, do not have enough resources for life, but enough for an interstellar flight of an entire artificial planet and on a completely insane scale military campaign. There's no point in that, they just flew in and killed everyone. And all this scenery, against the background of which anecdote about Jews, anecdote about warriors, anecdote about scientists, rulers, alcoholics, etc. are adorned with their stage interaction.
The plot is too simple: the entire alien armada is defeated by a single solution that can be implemented by two pranksters on a plate. Of course, the aliens are all fools, their systems are not protected in any way and are not able to identify the scout with access codes outdated for 50 years. Oh, yeah, they don't have access codes. And of course, finishes the picture of absurdity, the President of the USP, personally fighting on a fighter. Well, not on the horse.
And also in this film there is the same "cloud of fznamzon", right above the Novosoyorsk. Sheep are miserable. Any passerby in the Russian Quarter would write for 5 bucks. The utter reluctance of American filmmakers to write Russian normally, when they have all the money and technology in the world, is not just unprofessionalism, it is conscious neglect.
However, there is one plus. All the films about how aliens row on a failed invasion are divided into "before Independence Day" and "after Independence Day." What's the difference? In budget, scale and special effects. So the film still left its mark in the history of cinema.
P.S. Exactly a year later, the world saw “Men in Black”, where Will Smith essentially played a parody of himself.