By: Carrie Ratkevich, Staff Reporter
A review of “Battleship”
What happens when you mix a beloved childhood game, $200 mil and 30 years of alien movie clichés? 131 minutes of a slow sink into the sea of stupidity.
“Battleship,” based on the beloved Hasbro game, is the type of film that makes the world worse simply by having been filmed. Not even A-list stars like Liam Neeson (“Taken”, “Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace”) could turn dialogue that bad into something decent. What should have been an inspirational speech just before the final battle was instead, “Let’s go get those mother [expletive deleted]!” For a movie rated PG-13, there is a lot of cursing. Worse, the “You sank my battleship!” line spoken by Neeson in the trailers was cut from the movie.
Rhianna’s film debut as Petty Officer Cora “Weps” Raikes is a failed attempt at playing the bad-ass female character. Instead, she comes off as a woman in over her head who swears a lot.
As with any movie suffering from an awful plot and ridiculous dialogue, no special effect was too expensive. “Battleship” was overloaded with pointless special effects scenes that added nothing to the storyline. What should have been left to the cutting room floor, was instead used to make an already-too-long movie even longer.
The soundtrack seemed to be a sampling of other alien movie soundtracks thrown into a blender. This tactic may work well for electronica, but not for rip-off alien movies. And on that note, when exactly did Hasbro release “Battleship: The Alien Edition?” Since when did it change from two fleets blowing the hell out of each other?
The costumes were not terrible, but naval uniforms are pretty simple to figure out. The aliens look like bald people with a goatee made of bone. This was just another miss in a long line.
The only hits in this movie were homage to World War II veterans and one scene in which Taylor Kitsch (“John Carter”), as wayward little brother Alex Hopper, breaks into a convenience store to steal a chicken burrito and fails spectacularly.
More time was spent developing the character of the aliens that the human characters. Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Kitsch) watches his older brother, Commander Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgård) die in an alien attack and decides to avenge his brother in what is supposed to be a revelation toward maturity for the character. The aliens apparently never attack, but always defend and do so to something with a heartbeat only if it poses a threat.
This stunningly boring film is perfect for insomniacs, self-loathers and couples already on the verge of breaking up.
Perhaps next someone can option “Hi-Ho Cherry-O” or “Candy Land;” at least the latter has a smidgen of plot to wreak havoc upon.
“Battleship” gets one sunken ship out of five and a hearty nomination for worst film of the summer.
