Review of Battleship (2012) by Alejandro F — 03 May 2014

As much as I enjoy watching art house films, dramas, foreign films, and whatever else most people would consider snobby, I also have a penchant for enjoying trashy action films, especially ones that are big on explosions and special effects combined with hokey drama and dumb humor. As dumb as it is, Battleship is indeed a film that fit this much-needed bill and I found myself very entertained by this very stupid big budget action film.

The film starts off by explaining the Beacon Program which sent out a signal deep into space to the Planet G, which is believed to be similar to Earth and may possibly have life. It also follows the dysfunctional protagonist, Alex Hopper, who after yet another screw up is forced to join the Navy...where he is still dysfunctional, as is the course for such a character.

During the Rim Pac games in which navies from around the world compete in a series of war games to see who is the best, the Beacon Program ends up getting a response from Planet G and five ships make their way to Earth, but one of them ends up crashing in Hong Kong, while the other four crash in the Pacific near Hawaii.

During an investigation of one of the crafts, Alex inadvertently ends up causing something strange to happen to the ship and it shoots a beam into the sky which creates a dome which traps several naval vessels within it along with the entire state of Hawaii, thus beginning the alien invasion to take over Earth and cause all sorts of devastation in the process.

Now Alex, his fellow crew members, and the other naval vessels must battle these alien forces in this bizarre interpretation of the classic board game complete with all sorts of wacky drama, lots of explosions, cliched romance, stupid but funny humor, aliens, and more.

The plot is utterly hokey and sometimes the drama itself drags the film down because this film sometimes takes itself much too seriously when it shouldn't have considering it's basically the board game combined with Transformers and Independence Day. It should have just entirely been action scenes with minimal amounts of plot.

The acting is fairly decent considering the hokey nature of the whole premise. I enjoyed the performances and I felt that most of them went above what would normally only result in two-dimensional characters. However, it was a bit disappointing that Liam Neeson wasn't used more in this film and he seems to be pushed off to the side most of the time (You got Liam Neeson to be in your film, do something with him!). Be that as it may, the acting is far better than it should be for this caliber of film and I felt they all did a pretty good job.

However, it's the action and spectacle that made this film so entertaining to watch. There's lot of explosions, lots of destruction and mayhem, some battles with aliens (Apparently on Planet G, the aliens look like old who have porcupine quill goatees who don't like the sun), and some cheesy references to the game as the battleships try to take down the alien crafts. It's big, loud, and dumb, but it sure as hell was fun to watch for all of its glorious idiocy.

Battleship is only popcorn entertainment. It's nothing deep, it will not challenge your mind, and there's a high possibility you will hate it for being cheesy blockbuster nonsense. But, even as a person who enjoys watching films people would deem snobby and pretentious, I cannot deny that I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Battleship and it has gone down as one of many guilty pleasures that action genre has showered upon me. I love it, and I have no shame in admitting this fact.