Battleship

Oh my God what a dumb, dumb, movie. 


I used to play Battleship the game when I was little and I could swear that this movie was made by someone who was between the ages of 6-9 years old. 


But yet...


There was something about the movie, despite the stupid-ness, that I really enjoyed. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what it was. I just know that I walked out of the theater feeling dumber then when I had walked into it, but yet I had a shit-eating grin on my face from being somewhat entertained. 


Battleship is one of the hardest movies I have ever had to rate. It has the action of a super summer blockbuster and the fairly good visuals to go with it, but then again, none of the action was very original. And we all know how I feel about unoriginal action...
It also didnt have the best of scripts, yet I found myself laughing more often than I should have been. It was like my brain was telling me to hate the movie the entire time, while my heart was telling me to just sit back and enjoy it. 

Maybe Brooklyn Decker is the reason I enjoyed the film?
Probably not because her plot line sucks.

The plot of Battleship is just as ridiculous as one might expect. Humans have found a planet in another galaxy that resembles earth so naturally, we build a huge satellite to transmit a signal to this planet galaxies away (which I'm pretty sure that we dont have the capabilities of doing). Needless to say, some humanoid-like aliens receive the message and come to destroy our planet, obviously. I can just imagine the meeting to discuss the plot:

Michael Bay: "Ok so then some aliens come and then these battleships are on the water and the aliens are like POW POW PSHHHHHHH PSHHHHHHHHHH (as he signals an explosion with his hands) and the humans are like OH NO and then they are like LETS KILL THEM and then the battleships are like PSH PSH KABOOM on the aliens faces!"

Executive Producer: (As he writes all this down) Ok thank you Mr. Bay.

Michael Bay: So when do I start directing?

Executive Producer: Oh you wont be directing this movie, we just wanted your input.

I will say that the movie has more finesse than a Michael Bay movie in the sense that I can actually tell what the hell is going on once the action starts. But basically it follows the same formula as the Transformer movies but doesnt have the added bonus of fanboyism. 

Pretty impressive special effects in all sincerity

The movie did actually impress me in a couple instances however. There is a scene where the ship must guess where the enemy is at a la a Battleship game-like grid. I thought this was very clever to basically implement the game into the movie and it resulted in a fairly intense scene. The acting also wasnt that bad either. Liam Neeson could have done this role in his sleep and probably just took it for the free trip to film in Hawaii. But between this movie and John Carter, I am becoming quite the fan of Taylor Kitsch. It's a shame that his last two films have been basically financial flops. And wouldn't ya know it...Rihanna wasn't that bad at acting. I really thought (especially with her ridiculous party ways of late) that she would be atrocious. But the more lines she delivered, the more natural she felt on screen. I was surprised. There is one really bad actor in the movie however, and I feel bad for calling him out because he is clearly a war vet who has actually lost both of his legs. It really means nothing for me to use his name since he is not famous, but he is this big black guy who ends up helping Brooklyn Decker attack the aliens that land on Hawaii (probably the worst and least interesting parts in the movie). Let's just say that I could have sworn he was reading his lines off a teleprompter. 

Look! Rihanna really did find love in a hopeless place!

But as I said earlier, there are just some really stupid scenes in the movie. And I mean stupid in the sense that no body thought them out. Here are some examples:

• Near the end of the movie, the remaining soldiers must restart one of the old war ships on display in Hawaii. When they state that they "have no crew", all of these older veterans emerge from all these nooks and crannies on the ship. Like seriously, the most ridiculous places. There are some of them that are standing on the high precipices of the ship and I was generally worried they were going to fall but I was too busy laughing at the fact that they were there in the first place.
• The scaling of the ships is laughable. At one point the ship is up along the Hawaiian coast and the camera zooms out from a top view. In this frame, the movie is essentially telling me that the ships are 1-2 miles in length. Ridiculous.
• The ship dynamics made me think I was watching The Fast and the Furious: Pacific Drift. Apparently huge war ships can be immediately placed in reverse and shoot backwards? And apparently anchors dropped while the ship is in motion causes the ENTIRE SHIP TO DRIFT AT 90 DEGREES IN THE OCEAN?!?! I mean if there is anyone who likes dumb, unrealistic fun its me...but come on. That's just silly.

My advice if you want to see Battleship: go into it with low expectations and find a cheap time to go. I did both of these things and that is probably why I somehow actually enjoyed it. It's not necessarily a bad movie per say, it's just a really stupid one. 

Pros:

• I liked the actors for the most part. They werent stretching their acting chops, but they were people I could get behind
• Some funny parts and writing
• Good special effects
• The beginning and the end are substantially better than the middle and the end features some really funny old-guy-one-liners

Cons:

• See the list of stupid stuff above
• The "first contact" sequence is so bad. WHY DIDNT THEY USE THEIR BIG GUNS? 
• Unresolved plot lines. War on the aliens planet? Oh I have no idea because it was mentioned and never discussed again
• Stupid looking aliens
• Action ranges from somewhat entertaining to boring and often sticks more towards the latter
• Liam Neeson is woefully underused
• Useless soundtrack. I guess all the good, musically inclined guys are busy these days?
• Carries no weight. I didnt give a damn who lived and who died and I hate it when movies are like that

Rath's Review Score: 4.5/10

And if you havent seen it yet, you should probably watch the new Skyfall trailer. It should explain why I plan on walking around in a tuxedo and ordering martinis for the next several months. At about the 1:09-1:12 mark I pretty much 100% decided that I want to be a spy for a career. Screw engineering...