Battleship

I know I'm a little late on this one and if you havent seen this movie by now then you probably wont. But if you were like me and had already decided that you were waiting for HBO to run this movie then hopefully this will change your mind. From the previews it really does look like the Michael Bay just sold Universal Pictures extra footage he had from Transformers to make a little money. But they do just enough with it to make it feel a little different. Early on it's old school Bay/Bruckheimer with cheesy barely funny jokes, random chases for no reason, and terrible guitar solos. Actually they reached their peak with this in The RRRRooooock (in Sean Connery voice) but it was good to see it back for nostalgia's sake. And once they  were finally finished with giving you 20 or so minutes of lazy backstory, they got to the real reason you paid to see the movie. Aliens transforming and things exploding. Oh and did I mention that Mikey Bay nor Bruckheimer had anything to do with this movie. It was actually directed and produced by Peter Berg. You may remember him as Terry Conklin in Great White Hype. If you don't, do yourself a favor and see this movie. Actually it's a pretty dumb comedy about boxing but by the time he's playing his acoustic song you're pretty much hooked.

Anyway, the point is, he's completely adopted the Bay formula for movies. Tons of CGI, lots of explosions, a few jokes sprinkled throughout, and long shots of Americana scenes. You know, kids eating ice cream or playing baseball, or even soldiers walking in slow motion. Sometimes this is so overdone that it just falls flat but here it actually works . There's a scene later in the movie where they have to enlist the help of some WWII veterans to help save the world and it's actually done so well that you can't help but get a little pumped meanwhile overlooking to absurdity of the situation. Oh yeah, speaking of the absurd plot; Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) finds himself all of a sudden thrust into leading his own ship against these aliens who have landed off the Pacific Coast in response to a message we sent their galaxy. Except these aliens don't have the friendly intentions we did. They mean to take over our planet using their advanced weapons and technology. There is a race against time to take out their communications satellite before they make contact with their home planet to send reinforcements and it takes multiple efforts by many (including Hopper's girlfriend and an injured retired vet) to do so. Oh and blah blah blah, for the most part that's it. There's lots of explosions, quite a few people stepping out of their comfort zones, aliens destroying battleships, and well...Rihanna. After the first 20 minutes, its well paced with enough cool action in it to where you dont feel cheated by the fact you strictly paid for CGI and hopefully a shot or two with Brooklyn Decker (damn you Andy Roddick) or Rihanna in a bikini. There are quite a few plot holes in this movie but overall if you are simply looking to be entertained while also slightly inspired, I would suggest going to see this flick. I will rate it as barely FRESH.

Oh and yes,, they actually do incorporate a scene from the game. There's about 15 minutes where they are using buoys as marking points that they call sector K19 or J12. They then use these points as locations to send their bombs and yell out ridiculous things like DIRECT HIT!! It's pretty amazing to say the least.