Review by Bob Ignizio
At the advance screening for BATTLESHIP
I attended, I found myself talking to the person in the seat next to
me. Seems he had already seen the movie while on vacation in England.
His assessment of the film: “It's good. It's like TRANSFORMERS.”
I pass no judgment on this man. The fact is, there are a lot of
people out there for whom the two parts of that statement present no
contradiction, and nothing a critic might say about such a film
either way is likely to change their desire or lack thereof to see a
movie like this. I guess that's why, after sitting through the first
mind-numbing 90 minutes of the two hours-plus BATTLESHIP,
I didn't feel all that guilty for deciding to walk out.
Perhaps
in the final 40 minutes of the film which I missed, something
surprising or at least interesting occurred. And perhaps, seeing as I
did not stick with the film until the bitter end, I have no business
reviewing it. That's your call as a reader to make. Regardless, I
give you my thoughts on what I did see.
The
review of the guy sitting next to me would probably cover the bases
for most people, but I'll break it down a little further. It's like
the plot from INDEPENDENCE DAY,
only instead of Will Smith as a hotshot Air Force pilot, we get
third-rate Channing Tatum wannabe Taylor Kitsch, recently of JOHN
CARTER, as a hotshot Navy
officer. The CG alien ships definitely have that TRANSFORMERS
look, though. Pieces of these vehicles are constantly moving for no
apparent reason, and they hop across the surface of the ocean like
giant, ungainly mechanical frogs. Toss in enough gratuitous lens
flare to annoy even J.J. Abrams, and that about sums it up.
Other
observations: While I generally appreciate when modern action films
bother to include at least some character development, I don't think
we really needed to spend 30 minutes just to establish that Kitsch's
character is an asshole; cheese fests like this have no business
trying to be epics, and the tedious length and mostly serious tone
director Peter Berg adopts just drive home how shallow the whole
affair is; finally, Liam Neeson will apparently appear in any movie.
No
star rating. I didn't suffer through the whole thing, so I didn't
earn the right. Just refer once again to what the guy sitting next to
me said. If, “It's like TRANSFORMERS,”
sounds like your idea of
entertainment, just write me off as another elitist critic and go see
BATTLESHIP. If you're
more like me and the idea of seeing anything even remotely like
TRANSFORMERS sounds
like torture, skip it.
I'm so sick of seeing that damn BATTLESHIP logo at the bottom of the TV screen every minute - and I don't even watch TV if I can avoid it - I'm just avoiding this movie on purpose. That it looks like a Wall Street corporate-assembled suck-tacular marketing decision (based on a board game) is just icing on the urinal cake. Spielberg producing or not, I knew no good could come of TRANSFORMERS, but would you all listen?
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