Just for the record...

Why is this film so bad that it requires copious amounts of alcohol to get through?

It's lazy sloppy filmmaking at it's laziest and sloppiest by a couple of billionaires with contempt for their audience. There is no excuse because they should know better. To quote Lawrence Kasdan's Raiders of the Lost Ark screenplay:

"It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

Or to put it another way: it's not the aliens or the computer effects, George, it's the script.