We haven't done a movie review with some discussion starters for a while. So, here goes...
I went to see Battleship fully expecting to have a rather silly, bloke-ish few hours of fun. I did. That didn't surprise me much. What did surprise me, though, was that it was actually a very good film.
Unsurprisingly, the movie got panned by the critics. But then, it's a movie about a US Navy battleship fighting aliens and a young hero played by a model, who is after the Admiral's daughter. Also played by a model. It's a formula just begging for serious movie connoisseurs to sneer at it, and sneer they did. In so doing though, they forget the fact that the move doesn't really take itself that seriously, and that in the moments where it is trying to be serious - like when they are trying to get across that the aliens are powerful and scary - it does incredibly well. Other things it does well include special effects, stories of comradeship, and - for military history buffs like me - the rather lovely inclusion of the USS Missouri. It also sends a strong message that ingenuity goes a long way!
Okay, so there are some things it doesn't do well. The plot has a few pretty large holes in it (like how a guy goes from criminal misfit to Naval Officer in a few camera cuts) and also leans too much on coincidence, but it's generally a good movie. After all, it's not like they upload a computer virus into an alien ship, and leave a generation of geeks to wonder where on earth they found a compatible lead! This is sci-fi which knows it's silly and doesn't get caught out pretending it's not! I mean, why else pack the cast with supermodels?
I always get ticked off when people criticise movies for failing to do things they were never trying to do in the first place. This wasn't Citizen Kane. But it wasn't trying to be. It did what it was trying to do extremely well, and director Peter Berg (yep, Dr. Kronk from Chicago Hope) deserves credit.
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