This May Sound Crazy, But
Battleship was awesome.
I just watched it, and I loved it. I laughed, I cried, I clapped, literally.
Here's the conventional wisdom on Battleship: It's a movie from the Michael Bay school of incoherent, mindless, cynical marketing tie-in driven Hollywood blockbuster. It's a movie based on a board game, made to fulfill someone's legal obligations to some IPs purchased from Hasbro. A movie that's kind of required to feature a class of ship no world Navy even uses any more (they've all been retired for more than a decade).
So, a stupid movie based on a stupid idea made for a stupid reason.
And you know what, Battleship is stupid. You can see plot holes in it a mile wide. It's corny, it's cheeseball, there's a billion implausibilities.
But. It's also funny. Funny in a way Bay's Transformer movies never managed to be funny despite his repeated, painful efforts. The action is generally coherent and easy to follow. The movie is pretty heavily male, but the two women in the cast do more and are leered at less than in any Bay film. The minorities aren't embarrassing or offensive. And it's just rousing and fun.
The director, Peter Berg, stated in some interviews that the movie is intended as a love letter to battleships and battleship crews and it shows. Not to spoil excessively, but there's a sequence involving people who are not actors, who are clearly having so much fucking fun, every scene with them makes me grin.
In some ways Battleship reminds me of Independence Day and The Core, in terms of being cheesy, sentimental and fun action sci-fi junk food. But I think Battleship, for the kind of movie it is, will age better than ID4. If you're bored on rainy Saturday afternoon or something, give it a shot.
I just watched it, and I loved it. I laughed, I cried, I clapped, literally.
Here's the conventional wisdom on Battleship: It's a movie from the Michael Bay school of incoherent, mindless, cynical marketing tie-in driven Hollywood blockbuster. It's a movie based on a board game, made to fulfill someone's legal obligations to some IPs purchased from Hasbro. A movie that's kind of required to feature a class of ship no world Navy even uses any more (they've all been retired for more than a decade).
So, a stupid movie based on a stupid idea made for a stupid reason.
And you know what, Battleship is stupid. You can see plot holes in it a mile wide. It's corny, it's cheeseball, there's a billion implausibilities.
But. It's also funny. Funny in a way Bay's Transformer movies never managed to be funny despite his repeated, painful efforts. The action is generally coherent and easy to follow. The movie is pretty heavily male, but the two women in the cast do more and are leered at less than in any Bay film. The minorities aren't embarrassing or offensive. And it's just rousing and fun.
The director, Peter Berg, stated in some interviews that the movie is intended as a love letter to battleships and battleship crews and it shows. Not to spoil excessively, but there's a sequence involving people who are not actors, who are clearly having so much fucking fun, every scene with them makes me grin.
In some ways Battleship reminds me of Independence Day and The Core, in terms of being cheesy, sentimental and fun action sci-fi junk food. But I think Battleship, for the kind of movie it is, will age better than ID4. If you're bored on rainy Saturday afternoon or something, give it a shot.