Review: Battleship

I never saw this day coming. Some of the folks in Tinseltown decided that it was a good idea to make a movie about the board game Battleship. Even though making a movie inspired by a board game is odd and rare, I took the same "wait and see" approach that I always take before I judge something. I've been surprised by movies that I thought were going to be terrible and I ended up liking or even loving them sometimes. So with this or any other movie, I always hope for the best.

Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is an irresponsible young man with no direction in life. After getting into trouble, his military brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgard) forces him to enlist in the Navy out of frustration. Stone hopes that this will teach his brother some discipline and mold him into a better man than he is. The two join together in the Navy, and it's there that they meet the most dangerous foes that the navy has ever faced. They have to go head to head with a group of extraterrestrial who want to take over the world.

There are two things that stand out to me more than anything else when I look at the movie Battleship. One of those things is an early scene that's completely taken from a t.v. show called Tru T.V. Presents: World's Dumbest. Sometimes it shows videos of real life criminals caught on tape doing dumb things and it's one of the few shows on television that I watch. If you know the show, there's a chance that you've seen the clip that I'm talking about and you might recognize it. When it comes to the movie, the bad news is that this scene is one of the top two or three best parts of the movie, the worse news is that the scene is nowhere near as funny as the actual video. That's not good.

One of the other things that stood out to me was the music that's in the film. The soundtrack to Battleship is very loud, powerful and solid overall. However, I'm not bringing up the soundtrack because I liked it. I'm actually talking about it, because it's literally in nearly every scene. When I look back at the movie, I can't really remember a scene that didn't contain any music. That has to be extremely rare and I don't think I've ever watched a movie with so much music.

There's also a large amount of noise flowing through most of the scenes as well. All of the booms and bangs that you're probably expecting are there, but it's done in excess in my opinion. I honestly believe that there's so much music and noise used in Battleship, because they're trying to prevent the audience from realizing how bad everything else is. If you tone down some of the noise and take away some of the orchestral music you'll clearly a bunch of action set pieces that don't have much to offer as far as quality is concerned.

With this movie, this makes two crappy movies in which Taylor Kitsch has starred in this year. It looks like he's becoming the go to guy in Hollywood whenever someone is needed to play the lead role in a bad action movie with a big budget attached to it. He starred in John Carter and Battleship, and neither one of them is any good if you ask me. I don't know what the future holds for Mr. Kitsch, but I hope he manages to add a few good movies to his resume as his career continues.

It's obvious that I don't like this movie. The aliens didn't look threatening or intimidating in the least, the acting isn't very good, the attempts at comedy are pathetic and the action is lame with a few exceptions at the end. The action struck a chord with me the most and that's because along with the visual effects, it's the most important thing in a movie of this style.

This had to be some of the most disappointing action that I've seen in a very long time. You should at least be able to enjoy all of the bombs and explosives that are there to be had, but most of it is bland and immediately forgettable. The action and set up of the action should be made to feel epic. Even if the other aspects of the film suck, you'd at least be able to get some entertainment out of it. When I watched something like Independence Day, I got a sense that something big was about to go down when the aliens first arrived on Earth. In Battleship, the direct opposite occurs. There's no intensity or any energy going through these moments when they happen on-screen and that should never be the case.

As it turns out, nobody even had to try to sink this Battleship (pun intended). The people who put it together managed to do that all on their own.I realize tat the dudes in Hollywood will continue to make movies based on existing properties and I don't have a problem with that. I do however, hope they stick with material from thins like comic books and novels when they do it. I don't think we need to see movies based on board games at all. Next thing you know, we're going to have an action movie based on Monopoly. If that happens, there are two things that might follow: Taylor Kitsch may star in it and I might jump off of a cliff.

Score: 1.5/5

Rating: PG-13

Director: Peter Berg

Cast:
Taylor Kitsch
Alexander Skarsgard
Liam Neeson
Rihanna
Tadanobu Asano
Brooklyn Decker

Film Length: 131 minutes

Release Date: May 18, 2012

Distributor: Universal Pictures

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