Manic Expression

Rating: YOU ALREADY KNOW IT'S DUMB!

Remember playing Battleship back in the day? A lot of fun wasn't it? Battleship's grid system helped people like me learn to locate places on maps and how under prepared our naval prowess was. As it's popularity grew over time, different incarnations of the game sprung up. Today, you can buy a very small version for about ten bucks. This way, you can drop all those annoyingly small pieces even on car trips. Back in the day, we wanted to be annoyed further by programming in our pre-configured battleship locations and trying to determine whether we got a hit or a miss by the sound, rather than just asking our friend.

(Yeah! I hit you! I didn't? Then what was that noise? Water splashing? Okay...wait, are you fucking lying to me?!?)

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that people loved the traditional formula so much that when the version including aliens came out, it went under the radar (HA! Nautical pun). What's that you say? There WASN'T  a version that included aliens? Then where the hell did THIS come from?!?

(Leftovers from Battle: Los Angeles.)

I went to see this with Bunny and Teo and I should say that while this movie is BAD we still had fun...though for different reasons. Teo didn't think it was boring. He 'shut off his brain' and let the stupidity wash over him. Bunny and I were surprised that Teo wanted to watch the movie. Bunny found it stupid (and she enjoyed Jack and Jill) and I found it insulting.We made fun of it at every possible opportunity. At one point, I left for nachos, told here everything that was going to happen, for the scene and for the rest of the movie, and when I got back, I was right.

Let me just say that I can't remember the name of a single character in this movie. I could look it up to give you all a proper run down, but I don't want to. This movie doesn't deserve it. Keep in mind, I'm at fault just as much as this movie is. I usually ask why people see movies they know they're not going to enjoy and tsk them when they end up not liking it. I made my own fun with this movie, and I would probably give it a 'so bad it's good' moniker, but as I said previously, it felt like this movie went out of it's way to insult me.

Allow me to explain. First I should say that's I'm not going to nit pick the science too much. Maybe some, but not that much. I'm not going to get into the fact that the NOAA's data is not represented in the way this movie portrays it, I'm not going to get into the fact that this movie rips a quote from Stephen Hawking which voices a valid concern and attributes it to a fucking moron who uses it for exposition, and I'm certainly not going to mention that when we send communications into space, it's not done via GIANT FUCKING LASER BEAMS!

(This is apparently what talking looks like in the Battlefield universe.)

What I do feel insulted by is the way the ships move. Throw a flat stone across a pond. See how it skips a few times? That's how these fucking ships move. Bunny said that this movie shouldn't just be called Battleship, it should also be called Frogger. Am I really supposed to believe that this advanced alien race, that traveled through space and can hover via some kind of impulse engine, has to travel across the ocean via skipping?!?

 Another thing about the spacecrafts...at the beginning of the movie (relatively speaking...we get almost a half hour of dragged out character development before anything happens) one of the five spacecrafts crash into Hong Kong. It's not explained why. It just falls. After seeing how they travel on sea, I can only assume that they're a race of drunkards. The first guy lost control, blew up the communications vessel, and now the remaining party goers (since I do believe now that they came to Earth to PARRRRR-TAY!) have to reestablish communications to their home world to call someone's cool Uncle to be DD.

(Dude! Toss me a cold one!)

What should be interesting about this movie, but became my main complaint, is that the humans are the bad guys. Of course, the movie doesn't know this. The whole conflict is based off an assumption. We psychically see the aliens at war with...someone, then we assume from what the scientist guy said that they're trying to use our planet for...something, finally we have to assume that this is just a scouting force that needs a communications ship (though they don't exactly know what it is) to send word to their home planet (because, you know, they are on the same communications level as us despite being so advanced).

That being said, they never shoot first. In fact, most of the time they ignore the humans simply walking around. The scientist guy (who reluctantly does anything and the audience wishes WOULD get shot) walks right into his lab, grabs a case, pretty much says "hello" and walks out. The aliens analyze everyone and everything to determine if it has a weapon. If it does, they defend themselves, if they don't they let them go. Real assholes, aren't they?

When we first see them the USS Whateverthefuckitscalled, sounds a warning horn. You know what evil deed happens? The aliens send back a bigger warning horn! So what do we as peace loving humans do? Shoot at them. It's a warning shot, but how are the aliens supposed to know that? All they see is a boat fucking shooting at them!

(These humans seem nice. Send out a welcome party, blast the party horn...WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?)

So they shoot back aaaaaaaand blow up the boat with Bullseye the main character's brother on it. Of course this makes Whatshisface very angry. He's now in command! What does he do when he now has the lives of everyone he's with in his hands?

Get's them all killed, of course.

(Our hero ladies and gentlemen!)

Final Thoughts: Why did I see this movie? Because everyone told me not to. It wasn't until half way through that I realized how big my mistake was. It's big and stupid, but it CAN be a lot of fun. I just didn't do it right. Take a younger kid with you to see it. Their eye's will light up at the explosions and the simple plot elements. They won't see the glaring stupidity of it all (young ones have special sunglasses of fun when it comes to shining shit like this). If you don't have access to a child (or can't steal one [I don't condone stealing children]) then get rip roaring drunk. No liquor? Make sure someone is there with you and that the theater is empty enough that you can make fun of it.

Failing all this, if you still have to see it for some reason, do what I did. Sneak into another movie afterwards. I liked The Dictator as much the second time around as the first.