Review of Battleship (2012) by Quincytheodore — 23 May 2012

Seemingly possessed by the spirit of Michael Bay, Battleship, despite being a nautical eye candy, is sunk by terrible dialogues equal to last decade's corny action movie punch lines, patched poorly by shallow plot and loud crank of metal. It's literally a cobbled up pieces from your typical invasion movies, predictable and empty. Inspired by a video game, it's also serves as homage to the navy, which hopefully unintentionally, becomes more ridiculous after each explosion and awful line. This is a 90's B-movie in soul but with top notch CG cosmetic.

The cinematic and explosive scenes are delightful, well created to showcase the action in more coherent way. It looks pristine, clear cut accompanied by vibrant colors. With more focus on naval battle, it uses plenty blazing and watery effect to exaggerate the action. For fans of action movie who simply seek for full blown extravaganza, it's serviceable. However it's not exactly novel, you'll get the strange familiar feeling that you have seen the carnage before. With fiery explosion like Transformers', thrilling alien contact similar to Armageddon's, popular old soundtracks and fan service like Megan Fox's ass, trust me, that déjà vu feeling will come.

Conversation is downright atrocious. With the characters spewing testosterone induced taunts and banters, even Rihanna does it, to the point of being a bit embarrassing to watch. I'm surprised it doesn't use "Hasta la Vista, baby." In that regard, the acting is decent at best. Honestly, it's very superficial and over-the-top, you just embrace the silliness of it all. You can pretty much tell with Taylor Kitsch (John Carter) and Liam Neeson (Zeus) recreating gruff manly role not far from their previous ones.

Alongside that, it carries a staggering amount of plot holes. The invader lacks characters' hostility judgment which gives our main characters plenty of occasions to survive their encounters of odd kind. Despite having nifty arsenals and able to travel through stars, their infantries are not given handgun adequately, thus ensuring dramatic melee fight scene between humans and aliens. Some characters also survive magically from sinking ship and car crash because the script demands it so. But hey, we've got explosion and babe, they look good. If you come for those, you might get some joy from Battleship, just ignore the outrageous premise.