Battleship

BATTLESHIP: Hilariously Stupid & Excruciatingly Corny
by Reymundo Salao

I have two descriptions for this movie; it feels like either or both; (A) a really bad tagalog movie; or (B) a cartoon for children with undeveloped minds. The stupidity amused me for a while, but when I realize that I actually wasted money on this awful movie, it just got purely depressing.

BATTLESHIP is actually a movie based on the naval war strategy board game. Many were surprised that the movie version of this game suddenly looks like an alien invasion action movie. It can be easily assumed that the producers of this piece of crap wanted to market a movie utilizing the same appeal the Transformers movies have; make it flashy and stupid. Sadly, it has become a winning formula these days. While this movie is also designed to entice viewers to be interested in the Battleship game once again; what it actually did was it just made me lose interest in it.

I thought Transformers 2 and 3 were the two dumbest big movies I’ve ever seen. I was not too surprised that BATTLESHIP was dumber. Peter Berg has a decent filmography; he did Friday Night Lights, Hancock, The Rundown, and The Kingdom. What the f%ck happened to him on this movie?! Did he just turn idiotic overnight? In this new movie, Berg seemed like he was channeling Michael Bay’s style. In fact, the entire movie felt like a Michael Bay movie; the really poor character development, the lousy dialogues, the awfully corny dramatic elements, the flashy but unoriginal visuals; and the inappropriate and insulting jokes. Idiots would really love it.[MORE AFTER THE JUMP]


Taylor Kitsch recently appeared as the lead in “John Carter” the movie which is gaining popularity as one of the biggest cinematic failures in recent years. He is now the lead actor as well in this movie, which for me, already feels like it deserves to be a failure. His character in this movie has probably THE worst character development I’ve ever seen in any movie. Right from the start, the first 15 minutes of the movie shows us how his character is terribly unlikeable in a very very corny scene. In fact, the movie is filled with so many corny scenes. The jokes were corny; the dialogues were corny; the disabled guy who insists he can prove himself to be an efficient soldier again was corny; the scene where the veterans prove that they (and their battleship) can still be efficient was also corny; the love story was corny.

The little sub-issues with the disabled guy and the veterans were supposed to be a nice gesture which sends out a good message. The intentions were good, I could appreciate that. But it was poorly done that, for me, makes it look like a sarcastically insulting joke.

No matter how senseless and inconsistent, the movie keeps on forcing Rihanna into every scene, obviously only for the sake of having Rihanna play an important role. She looked like just an attractant to make the movie look appealing. That’s what the movie does best; inject little cheap, “trending” factors to draw in a crowd. Just like the soccer game and the “Jack-ass” type humor.

The alien “destroyer yoyos” looked like an endorsement to sell a toy, which is probably the case since this is indeed a Hasbro (toy company) movie. Just when the movie tries to set up an interesting character arc as to why these aliens don’t simply attack non-hostile materials, or as the film initiates to ask where they come from and why they are here… it just simply abandons that and leaves it unanswered.

Simple logic has no place in this movie. Usually in other sci-fi movies, no matter how fantastic the concepts are, there still is a sense of logic which makes everything that happen make sense. In this movie, it clearly does not bother to clean up all the logical loopholes. It’s like your typical bad Tagalog movie like the movies of Bong Revilla which are all made without any sense of review. Sloppy and childish.

Although there were really few moments in this movie which I liked; such as the part where our main characters finally do apply the concept of the board game to the movie, and the final battle. These few scenes were not enough to make me think otherwise into judging this film with all-caps; AWFUL and STUPID.

Seriously, this really is a kid’s movie. And I don’t mean the kind of kid’s movie that has some degree of mature entertainment or clever storyline like “Up” or “The Incredibles”. No, no. It’s like something for kids whose minds are still young and simple; it’s like Barney. It’s really just something for the undeveloped mind.

The movie opened nationwide yesterday. It will be released in the United States on May 18, 2012.