BATTLESHIP

HER VERDICT: "Even more atrocious than I thought it would be."

         This movie was absolutely one of the very worst I've seen in a long time. It simultaneously sucked, blew and bit.

        You, of course, remember the classic Hasbro game, Battleship? Little grey boats, little cylindrical pegs, the war cry of "You sank my battleship!" Never the first choice (or second or third choice, for that matter) in gameplay even in the days before video games. So Hollywood, in all its INFINITE WISDOM decided to turn one of the most boring board games ever into an action-packed mess and sell tickets. Well done.
        We meet Alex, who is played by the same guy who was the title character in John Carter (which you also didn't see). Alex is in his twenties, aimless according to his brother, Stone, and stupid enough to break into a convenience store for a late night burrito to impress a girl. He gets arrested, gets the girl and gets forced into the U.S. Navy by big brother. Stone is played by one of the guys from HBO's True Blood. I don't know who his character is or whether it's a vampire, werewold, fairie or woodland nymph. I just know he's on the show. In this movie, however, he's an upstanding Naval officer and source of some small guidance to screwup baby brother, Alex.
        Jump ahead. Everyone's on boats. The details of why and how are so boring I can't even make myself summerize them in print. The boats are on the water. Stuff from space crashes into the water. And the movie completely stops making sense from this point until the credits roll. Lots of things happen, but none of it is particularly logical, interesting, plausible or clever. There are alien battleships, alien stormtroopers, a force field bubble, a legless army vet on a mountain hike and oh so many more completely ridiculous things that I really wish I'd gone my whole life without seeing or knowing about. So let's move on to the acting.
        I find it difficult to put into words just how horrible the acting in this film was. But I must press on and force my mind to relive the horror of the actors' perfomances in this film. I do this in order to help you understand just how abhorrent these performances were.
        Alex was played by Taylor Kitsch. His performance was stunted, like he wasn't sure what he was doing. It was like watching cardboard trying to evoke emotion.
       Alexander Skarsgard was apparently directed to play the character of Stone completely literally. He followed this direction well.
       Rhianna was there. To answer your first question, "I don't know why." To answer your second question, "No, she can't act." And not only could she not act, but she couldn't even be understood most of the time. She mumbled her way through the movie as the only female sailor in the film and refused to have a single ounce of feminitity. According to this movie, the only women who grow up to join the Navy are mannish tomboys. As a woman who tried to join the Navy myself, I gotta say it ticked me off a bit. But I'm over it. The whole movie was awful, so why not throw in some appalling stereotyping?
       Jesse Plemons, whose face you've seen but name you don't know, was comic relief. This means he acted as ridiculous as possible instead of the way you'd want a soldier/sailor of the United States military to act in a crisis. However, that was the character's role and the actor, while not inspired, didn't do a completely horrible job. It was by no means great. But it wasn't totally crap-tastic, either.
       Liam Neeson was also in this movie. Again I say, "I don't know why." I imagine they paid him lots and lots of money and told him all he'd have to do is stand very still and look incredibly stoic and bark a few words at a piece of cardboard (Kitsch). He did his job. He got paid. Well done, Liam. Now off you go to Taken 2.
       I'm not even going to talk about the army vet with titanium legs because it's pretty clear he's not an actor.
       That's it. Battleship was terrible. Don't sit through it... Ever. If you do, you can't say you haven't been warned.

 

 

HIS VERDICT: "I went to the bathroom."

         Please understand. When I go to the movies, I don’t go to the restroom. I hold it because I’m always afraid that if I go relieve myself, I’ll come back and someone will say, “You just missed the best part of the movie.” So I always hold it. Even If I have the Super Bladder Buster, I hold it. No matter what, I hold it until the movie is over. 

        I’m never willing to miss a joke, an explosion, a witty quip, something funny or awesome to go to the bathroom. During this movie, I went. I’m certain while I was gone I missed plenty of jokes, explosions and quips. But I just didn’t give a damn. I don’t believe there could be anything that happened in those minutes that would make this movie passable. Not unless Batman and Mr. T showed up out of nowhere and simultaneously punched an alien in the face. Then Batman looked at Mr. T and said, “I pity that fool!” And even that level of awesomeness would only have served to upgrade this movie to simply “bad” instead of the horrible murder of money, time, talent, film, and craft service that it is currently.

        The lead character in this movie is Alex Hopper, a supposedly intelligent slacker with no direction. I hated him, his clichéd long hair and his girl chasing attitude from the very beginning. I might have been able to let it pass if he hadn’t smashed through the roof of a convenience store to get a girl a chicken burrito. Even though he caused thousands in property damage and lost merchandise, the audience is supposed to forgive him when leaves a couple of bucks for the burrito on the counter. When the cops finally arrived, I was hoping they would beat him.

       Seriously, there are so many WTF moments in this movie I think a list of some of the worst will be the best and simplest way to talk about the film.

1. An older brother makes his 26-year-old, grown-ass-man younger brother join the Navy.
2. Instead of asking the father of his girlfriend for her hand in marriage, Alex fights with another man in the bathroom.
3. The aliens, whose technology is far superior to ours, have missiles that look like giant wine bottles- and are just as aerodynamic.
4. The ship’s crew- comprised of trained military personnel- captures an alien. Instead of strapping it down, they just stand around it without any weapons or precautions. Then they’re surprised when it jumps up and kills at least four of them.
5. Due to rescue efforts when one of the Navy vessels is destroyed, there are at least two crews worth of personnel on the ship. However, when the alien is loose and running around, you only see 8 people. Only 3 of those have weapons, and I don’t think any are security personnel.
6. At some point in the film, people utter the lines, “Mahalo, motherf,” “Boom mother,” and “something-else motherf.” No one ever says the whole word.
7. A handicapped man and a young lady are climbing a mountain. The police encounter them and instruct the couple that they can’t be there and must leave at once. The police then promptly station one of their vehicles to block the road so other vehicles can’t follow and proceed to drive off. They do NOT offer the hikers a ride.
8. Rhianna was there… for some reason.
9. The aliens would not kill some people. No reason was given as to why. But they did destroy an air force base that did not even know they were there.
10. As a ship sank two characters climbed up all the way "up" to the very back of the boat- Titanic style- towards the spinning rotors to jump off in between them. Why not jump off the side of the boat away from the rotors like everyone else did (because that’s what makes sense)?

        I can’t sum up this movie with at simple see it or don’t. I can only refer to the debate moderator from ‘Billy Madison.” Adapt it to this movie yourselves because I’ve spent too much time on this already.

“What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”