Review of Pompeii (2014) by Matthew G — 17 Jun 2014

Pompeii has brought me so much joy, seriously it's hard to express my gratitude toward this awful piece of B Movie cheese. Yes, it's one of those so bad it's good movies. At least for the first 50 minutes. That's the strange thing about Pompeii, the first half of this movie is an all around laugh fest. While the last half goes into "Worst Picture" territory. It really is a mixed bag between god awful and guilty pleasure.

Pompeii tells the story of Milo (Kit Harrington ) who is in love with Disney Princess wanna be Cassia (Emily Browning). And I'll just be honest guys, that really is the basic plot. Yeah there are other idiotic things like Kiefer Sutherland plays this general who wants to marry Cassia for some reason and Milo fights his way through some sort of prison Gladiator fighting tournament ( I feel really stupid saying that sentence). And really that's the joy of this movie. The characters and storyline seem very incompetent but at the same time it's rather good and stupid entertainment. All of the characters in Pompeii are either tools to the plot or just character stereotypes. Princess Cassia for instance is a major tool. She has no defining character at all and seems highly unneeded. The only purpose she has is to be Milo's love interest. Even then, that doesn't work considering the fact that Harrington and Browning have no chemistry either. I feel sort of bad saying al lthis because it looks like Emily Browning is one of the only cast members trying her best with a horribly written character and weak script.

As for the rest of the cast, yeah it's easily seen all they want is their paycheck so they can pay their rent or something. Every minute that passes, it seems like all of the dignity these people ever had is being sucked away along with any acting talent if there was any in the first place. Both Kit Harrington and Kiefer Sutherland offer nothing to their roles or this movie at all. Simply put, they are just not believable. . However, I will say the guy playing Milo's cellmate and "brother" Atticus is another actor trying really hard with a character that is again another tool. However, competent acting can't save a movie from being laughably bad. Just a final note here, Atticus is the Hottest guy in this movie. Just putting it out there.

It really is hard to say what makes this movie so entertaining despite it being one of the most incompetent movies ever made. There are a lot of moments which include laughable dialog, the unintentional Homo Erotic scenes and Emperor Sutherland's cheerleading squad in dramatic masks. However, when the volcano finally erupts that's when this movie gets messy and just outright awful. It was almost like I was reliving the Pearl Harbor movie all over again. This Disaster is supposed to give us a catharsis of sadness seeing our characters suffer and eventually die (Spoiler Alert... like you care). However, this doesn't work because our characters have no real identity. It does suck seeing people dying obviously but we never got to relate to these characters because they were all just tools to a plot that didn't make sense anyway. So this tragedy seems like a huge middle finger to anyone in the audience laughing at the film. It's almost like a really bad and traumatic Guilt Trip from the filmmakers.

This film has a lot Guilty Pleasure moments and like I said the first 50 minutes or so are just a huge laugh fest. However, Pompeii still sucks because of that last half and it's general incompetence. And really that's what Pompeii is: An incompetent, witless and unintentional comedy. If you do decide to watch this movie, just watch it until the Volcano erupts. Anything before the disaster is a huge Guilty Pleasure.