Battleship

No doubt when people heard they were coming out with a movie based on the board game battleship there were a lot of eye rolls and heavy sighs.  Director Peter Berg of Friday Night Lights fame and the writing team of Jon and Erich Hoeber, who also wrote the Bruce Willis movie Red, heard the heavy sighs and decided to roll with it.  If people are already going into this movie thinking it is going to be ridiculous then why not just go full tilt.  Battleship is an overly computer generated action movie that follows every cliché in the genre, and the only thing that makes the movie enjoyable is just how ridiculous the movie becomes.

The movie feels a lot like Transformers and in a lot of respects it is, aliens coming down to earth with a plan to destroy it.  Actually I think once the aliens landed we were the ones who fired first, but that is not the point.  Where Michael Bay and Peter Berg differ is Bay took his action movies much more seriously.  Berg has seen a summer blockbuster before and knows that the demand for action is much higher than the demand for story.  So he makes the premise completely ridiculous and decides to not take the movie based on a 60's board game too seriously.

The movie opens on Lieutenant Alex Hopper played by Tim Riggins.  With no real direction in his life his brother played by Alexander Skarsgard from True Blood, forces him to join the navy under his command.  And I kid you not almost as soon as Skarsgard delivers the line "Do you think this is a game?" the title card for the movie flashes on the screen.  I have to believe they did that intentionally to set the tone for just how ridiculous the movie was going to be.  Because if they didn't, then really, just wow.  With a rocking soundtrack playing in the background that is just one of the many laughable moments of the movie, and I would love to give them away, but doing that would be like telling you the punch line to a joke before giving you the set-up.  Just know that during some of these moments the entire audience let out a bellowing moan, they are just that bad.  Thankfully no one in the movie says anything to the effect of "You sunk my battleship," but as soon as the reference to the grid board comes into play the movie becomes something so awful it just loops right back around to being awesome.

That being said it does take a while to get there.  The first half of the movie drags.  It may even be more than half the movie, it really is just that difficult to tell how long and how far the movie drags.  There are a lot of clichés the writing team need to set up first and the Hoeber brothers take their time getting to the point.  They always have a tough time getting all the information out in the first act like in their previous films Whiteout and Red.  But this then lets the duo put all the best action sequences and comedy at the end.  It wasn't till the action picked up that they seem to excel with pacing and finding the correct dialogue to fit the scene.

Since the movie was so hoke not much was demanded from the actors, which is important because none of the main actors have too much to offer.  You may be saying to yourself, but Liam Neeson is starring in the movie he is not really there.  While his name may be on all the advertising, really he is just there to collect a paycheck, he gets left out of most of the action as the commanding officer.  Most of the heavy lifting is done by Taylor Kitsch who some of you may remember, or most likely remember hearing about from the recent bomb John Carter.  It makes sense that Berg would go back to cast one of his biggest actors in his critically acclaimed television show, but in Friday Night Lights he was asked to be soft spoken off the field, and intense on it.  That soft spoken nature, which was captured well in the series, does not translate when you are asked to be the lead star in an action movie.  Rihanna also makes her feature film debut and while I went in wanting to make fun of her, she does fine in the movie as the spunky private with attitude.  Brooklyn Decker is always a great choice as eye candy, and she even gets her own storyline to stop the alien invasion.  All the actors do exactly what is expected from them and deliver all their lines with a smile on their face, everyone is in on the joke.

Unless you are a glutton for punishment, you probably shouldn't be paying the exorbitant ticket prices to see this movie.  The only relief to the movie is all the action doesn't come flying at you as they chose not to put the movie in 3-D although the visuals to the movie would certainly justify it.  A lot of the people walked out of the theater with a look of disgust on their face.  But I had a huge smile on mine.  The movie is laughably bad, and I can't remember a major blockbuster recently released like this. I loved this movie, but could see why people would hate it if they had expected something more.  I suppose they will have to wait for the theatrical release of Crossfire, because if it’s anything like the commercials, that movie would be epic. C+