Today's Review: Battleship

Hey, remember that time when you were playing Battleship with someone and the entire enemy fleet, that you previously thought matched yours in every way, actually turned out to be a few alien spaceships? Me neither, but apparently we've been playing the wrong board game, because this movie is based on some seldom played kickass alien version of Battleship. Why they licensed a board game before making a movie with only a passing reference to it is beyond me. But hey, Hasbro have probably maxed out sales of Transformers and My Little Pony, so they need to start selling some other stuff I guess.

So here we have Battleship, the most self-gratifying American movie I have ever seen, even more so than Transformers. Taylor Kitsch stars as Alex Hooper, a complete jackass who gets up to all kinds of shenanigans. After the movie spends an inordinate amount of time chronicling Alex's attempts to break into a mini mart to steal a burrito for a woman, we flash forward to seven years later, where he has successfully risen through the ranks of the US Navy. Yes, even the dumbest Americans are better than you. While on a routine naval exercise off the coast of Hawaii, some strange alien craft crash land in the ocean, and it is eventually up to Alex Hooper to kick their asses, because America. You see, the aliens are there because scientists have been sending off signals to other planets, and clearly scientists are wrong, because these aliens become hostile after the Navy shoots at them. Stupid scientists. Also, there's a subplot where Alex's girlfriend is accompanying a Navy amputee on a hike in the midst of the alien attack, and it's up to him to kick ass and get the scientist to clear things up so the Navy can step in and solve everything by blowing shit up. Because even an American in the Navy with no legs is more badass than some scientist.

This movie is pretty much everything you'd expect. Explosions, one liners, more explosions, sweeping patriotic music, different coloured explosions, lens flare, and also some explosions. Sure, it looks nice, but there's nothing spectacular here. Plus Rihanna's in it. I'm not even sure what to say about that. Still, if you're after a mindless action flick, and haven't been able to fill that hole of robots, explosions and bad gags that Dark Of The Moon left in your soul, then you can't go wrong with this one. In the end, it's all a bit of fun. Basically, since I'm watching this in the wake of Curiosity's landing on Mars, the only message I can take away from this movie is that the advancement of science is threatening to expose us to all kinds of alien shit, and only the military can take care of it. So stop funding space phone calls, and keep on buying missiles. Because America. Navy. Ooorah. Wait, that's the Marines. Well, okay, them too. 'Murica.

My rating: 2/5