0 stars (out of four)
After seeing Battleship,
I left the theater shell-shocked and in that depressed malaise that only the
very worst movies can bring out in me. This is the sort of movie that makes you
question the way you live your life. Maybe I should donate more to
charity? I should really call my parents more often. If the Mayans are right and the end of the world is coming this year,
you only have a limited number of hours left. How do you accept the fact that
more than two of those were just spent on Battleship? This is a question I do not have the answer to, as
I am still grappling with it myself.
Battleship takes its
name from the board game. As far as its entertainment value goes, the
experience of watching the movie is roughly equivalent to the clean-up process
of pulling out those little plastic pegs that always hurt your fingertips.
The opening text informs us that NASA has discovered a
distant planet in the so-called Goldilocks Zone (a real term astronomers use).
The planet’s orbit is just the right distance from its sun – not too hot, not
too cold – and scientists suspect it may support life. So they launch a massive
satellite that will transmit a message across untold light years in the hopes
that contact will be made.
Well, that was a bad idea. Contact is made but it is they
who contact us and their preferred method of communication is through
obliterating explosions. Five mysterious objects come hurtling through our
atmosphere and crash in the Pacific Ocean. There they float like colossal buoys
in the water; they are ships, of course.
Lucky for us, there is an international naval exercise going
on nearby. The American and Japanese navies are engaged in some
friendly game that is never properly explained. At any rate, they are
conveniently present to defend Earth, puny though their weapons may seem
compared to those of the aliens.
For Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), this means a chance at
redemption. He is a sloppy, irresponsible sailor and an embarrassment to his
older brother (Alexander Skarsgård). After a fistfight with a fellow officer,
Hopper’s naval career is at risk, which is particularly awkward since the man
he answers to is Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson), the father of his girlfriend
(Brooklyn Decker). Hopper was just about to ask the Admiral if he could have
his daughter’s hand in marriage when his immature outburst causes the good
Admiral to question the young man’s character. If only Hopper could prevent an
alien invasion and prove his future father-in-law wrong…
There are other humans in the movie too. Mick (Gregory D.
Gadson) is a hulking brute who lost his legs in battle and is just learning to
use his new prosthetic limbs. Hamish Linklater plays Cal, the requisite brainy
tech guy who spouts computer jargon at all the worst times. And in her debut
film role, Rihanna (rather ridiculously cast a petty officer) takes a crack at
acting and, by my count, she says all of her lines correctly.
But the Earthlings in Battleship are so hopelessly, pathetically ill-matched against
the aliens’ weaponry, rooting for them seems beside the point. Once you get a
good look at the alien ships (and director Peter Berg makes sure there are
plenty of sudden, dramatic zoom-outs to emphasize their size), our flimsy
heroes look especially small.
This is, after all, a summer special effects extravaganza
and plausible characters are pretty far down on the list of priorities for this
kind of movie. Unfortunately, the action sequences in Battleship feel like second-rate knock-offs of scenes from
Michael Bay’s Transformers films
and – if this is possible – they are even less coherent. I feel for all those
poor computer animators whose hard work was haphazardly tossed together in this
confused jumble. (Three different editors are credited on this film.)
Michael Bay at least has style and a vision; Battleship only has a budget it needs to spend. And watching
the filmmakers spend that budget seems to be at least part of the appeal of
movies like this. Battleship
recklessly wastes so much money – on indistinguishable set pieces that just get
demolished anyways, on large crowds of extras that appear onscreen for three
seconds – I wonder if it might not have been more fun to have a pop-up ticker
in the corner of the screen tallying the film’s expenses (more than $200
million).
Battleship goes on
and on for a punishingly long 131 minutes, dragging its heels as though it were
stalling for time. Peter Berg’s direction is utterly inert and the script by
Jon and Erich Hoeber is almost shockingly lazy. All the while, Steve
Jablonsky’s musical score beats you over the head, trying to convince you that
you are watching something interesting and exciting. In the end though, Battleship turns out to be one big bellyflop.
- Steve Avigliano, 5/22/12
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