Running Time: 2 hours, 11 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Peter Berg
Quick Impressions:
My nine-year-old stepson dreams of future military glory and has been dying to see Battleship since the very first preview. Earlier this week, I explained all this to my mother and said with a sigh of acceptance, “So it looks like we’re going to have to go see Battleship.” To my surprise, Mom’s eyes lit up as she cried in delight, “Battleship! That looks like a good one! Can we come, too?” So for the third week in a row, the entire family has spent Saturday at the movies.
This week my sister was in town. Her feelings about Battleship were more in line with my own (particularly after we started watching it), so it was fun to sit next to her during the movie. Some of the best jokes were the ones we delivered to each other.
I will say this much. Battleship was exactly what I expected. Exactly. My parents really enjoyed it. My stepson loved it. Loved it. My three-year-old daughter pointedly slept through it. (I say pointedly because without ear plugs, sleeping through this movie really takes dedication.)
The Good:
Battleship is a good title. I mean, about half-way through, you see that the filmmakers are definitely committed to paying homage to the project’s board game origins. Plus, for at least 85 percent of the total runtime, the key action takes place aboard a—you guessed it!—battleship. So, yeah, Battleship is a good name for this movie.
But you know what would have been a great name?
Explosions!
If you like explosions, then this is your must see movie of the summer! More cerebral, character driven films (like the Transformers series) hold most of the biggest explosions until the end. Previously, I naively imagined that such movies deferred the really big explosions because once they get all that annoying plot-type stuff out of the way, they can then devote a full hour to non-stop explosions.
But I was wrong. Oh, was I wrong.
Battleship gives us a few minutes of set-up, and then dives right into the explosions. And guess when they stop? They don’t!
That’s right. For those filmgoers who love nothing better than sitting in a darkened movie theater watching stuff blow up in digital surround sound, Battleship delivers what must be close to a whopping two hours of non-stop explosions, double the continuous explosion time of the by-comparison tame, uneventful Transformers movies.
On a serious note, action fans should make a point to see this movie in a theater with excellent sound because watching this movie surrounded by old, worn out, or improperly balanced speakers could probably render you permanently deaf. At the very least, you’ll spend most of the movie going, “What did she say? What did he say?” because you won’t be able to hear the dialogue well.
On second thought, that last thing might be a blessing in disguise. I’ve seen a lot of movies, and I’m definitely not a snob about cinema. I do love Oscar season, foreign films, and art house fare, but my tastes are expansive, and I also truly love zany summer blockbusters. So I’m not being pretentious or impossibly picky when I say that this movie has some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard in a major theatrical release. I think last year’s Conan remake actually had better dialogue and a smarter script. (In fact, we watched something on Netflix with my stepson about a giant shark and an octopus beast. That was also better.) In Battleship, nobody says anything that isn’t a tired cliché. You can finish the lines for yourself. And this isn’t done in a tongue-in-cheek way. It’s more of a we’re-too-lazy-to-bother-to-think-of-anything-better vibe that comes across.
Basically, this movie was just dumb. Was it entertaining? Yes. Most people in the theater seemed to have a positive reaction. Did I find it entertaining? No, not really. I would never watch it again in the theater unless somebody bribed me with a very nice gift—like a house. On the French Riviera.
To be fair, however, I have to admit that explosions overwhelm my brain and put me into a trance. (I told my husband, “It was like nothing happened for over an hour,” and he said, “It’s so funny that you think that because stuff was happening constantly.”) Another problem is that it’s hard to get attached to the characters because they’re all so dumb. I’m including this information under “The Good” because at least the stupidity of the movie enables you to provide your own comic relief.
The one good thing about Battleship—the only thing that I actually thought was well done—was the way that they honored the veterans. That was a nice gesture and a good idea. I think more capable hands could have developed that idea and incorporated it into a better movie, but I respect the good intentions behind the gesture.
Also, I learned something very important from watching Battleship. If you’re ever put in command of a battleship and sent out on a dangerous mission, always take Rihanna. Don’t ask why. Just trust me. You won’t be sorry.
Best Scene:
The scene that comes after the credits. I’m not being sarcastic. That’s not a joke. I honestly think this is the strongest scene in the film, the only one that remotely entertained me or held my interest. In fact, my three-year-old woke up during the end credits, happened to catch that final scene, and watched it intently, riveted to the screen. Of course, at the end, she declared decisively, “I didn’t like that,” but it did hold her interest. Why wasn’t the rest of the movie that interesting?
Best Scene Visually:
I went into a trance during all the action. During that trance, I thought, It’s such a shame. This movie is set in Hawaii, a gorgeous location. But you can’t see anything but constant explosions. And I’m sure this movie has a score. But it’s completely overwhelmed by the constant explosions.
At one point during my trance, however, something on the screen reached me, spoke to me. There’s this one scene where the spinning electronic alien destructo things sliced through a bunch of helicopters. That looked really cool. For some reason, I found it pleasant to watch.
My husband found Brooklyn Decker pleasant to watch. I have to admit she held my attention, too, mostly because I’d been spellbound through the early scenes of the movie, wondering, Why on earth does she want to marry this guy? But after getting a long look at her in action, I finally realized, Well, actually, they’re perfect for each other.
There’s this one moment when she’s staring off into the distance, and you’d expect her to look scared, but instead, her expression is somewhere in that delicate middle ground between vacant and angry. She looks like she went to get her hair or nails done, and the person helping her was inattentive, and she’s about to sigh shortly and then say, “Oh my God, you will never believe what happened to me today.” My husband tells me that Brooklyn Decker is a model. I think she should stick with that.
Best Action Sequence:
I love the part when the alien is loose below decks and first the enormous chief petty officer fights him. (On a side note, I liked John Tui’s character and thought he would have been much more capable of running the ship.) Every time the alien whacks him, this stocky, muscular man falls down on the ground and moans, “Ohhhh,” as he grabs at his sides. We hear prolonged groaning, and see weird alien scans of internal organs flash across the screen. Moments later Alex Hopper steps up and gets knocked down with similar groaning and anatomy scans.
Then along comes Rihanna. She takes a direct hit to the face and is down for precisely two seconds before jumping up with a mouthful of blood completely ready for action. She is, by far, the most capable and resilient member of the entire crew and one of a handful of characters in the film who is neither incompetent nor crazy.
Funniest Scene:
Probably the only part of the movie that I actually enjoyed was the exchange between disgraced sailor Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) and Liam Neeson’s Admiral Shane, who is baffled by his daughter’s choice of love interest. (And I’m right there with you, Admiral Shane.) I just love it when Alex completes an obscure quotation and attributes it to Homer, and the admiral snarls, “It makes me so angry that you know that.” How can I explain why that amused me so much? It’s not just funny. It’s basically the only instant of the movie that I genuinely liked and wasn’t simply trying to appreciate. It was a great moment in a terrible movie. I swear, Liam Neeson’s reaction in that instant is the only logical, relatable, and properly conveyed sentiment in the entire film.
The Negatives:
Hmm. I’m only just now getting to “The Negatives”? I feel like I’ve been bashing the film pretty steadily up to this point.
Maybe this seems weird, but first I’m going to talk about the part of the movie that I liked the best. (I promise, I’m doing this to illustrate how and why the film didn’t work for me.)
Though I swear that I tried, I was unable to connect with or root for the character of Alex Hopper, and I can never follow explosions, so my favorite storyline involved the antics of the people climbing the mountain. I wanted to like those scenes because they were the only ones that contained more dialogue than explosions. But what a disappointment those scenes turned out to be! Only the character of the injured soldier was likable, and none of the people involved could act (at least not with the direction they were getting).
I have seen Lifetime Original Movies with better acting! (That might be a lie. I can’t name one Lifetime movie that I’ve actually watched off the top of my head. But it feels very true.)
I’m not sure that the actors are to blame, though, because most of the characters seem shallow and flat, and I’m not confident that they’re getting good direction. On the mountain alone, Brooklyn Decker is acting like she’s bored after finishing up early at the tanning salon, and Hamish Linklater is acting like a cross between Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future and a series regular on a live action kids’ show on The Disney Channel. Meanwhile, playing wounded soldier Mick Canales, Gregory D. Gadson might not even be acting at all. My sister whispered to me, “Is he a real soldier? I hope so because he can’t act.” (And after Googling around—yes, he is an active duty soldier and bilateral amputee.)
Actually, I had no complaints Gadson and found him easily the most sympathetic character in the entire movie. I was with him right away. I mean, imagine if you’d lost your legs in combat and then Brooklyn Decker’s character shows up to be your physical therapist and give you a condescending pep talk.
It seems criminal that previews and ads for this movie make it look like Liam Neeson and Alexander Skarsgard are the stars. Both Neeson and Skarsgard do give solid performances, but neither of them is in the movie for more than fifteen minutes. (And I think I’m being generous with that estimate.)
A far bigger problem than the collective bad acting of the cast is the stupidity of the script and the general idiocy of the central characters.
At times, Battleship reminded me of the most recent Star Trek movie, the one by J.J. Abrams. In that story, Jim Kirk is a loner rebel with a troubled past. He has potential, but he makes bad decisions and acts on impulse. Battleship seems to want us to believe that Alex Hopper is cut from the same cloth.
Here’s the problem with that. Alex Hopper is a total idiot. He has an I Love Lucy approach to problem solving. If you need anything done, even the tiniest thing, take the most dangerous, risky, unhinged approach possible. Who cares if you’ve killed millions of people and damaged property in the process! At least you’ve accomplished what you set out to—wait! What were you trying to do again?
Alex Hopper is no Jim Kirk. Yes, Kirk acts on impulse, but he has good instincts and many qualities that make him (while too often an insubordinate follower) a natural leader. Hopper does not know what he is doing. What he does best is finally figure out that he needs to step aside and let more capable people be in charge. Then he gets a medal for some reason. (I guess because he brought the capable people together and didn’t stand in their way or try to beat them up for petty personal reasons.)
The movie tries hard to convince you that Hopper has all this potential by having characters lecture him about his wasted potential over and over again. But we never get the slightest hint of this vast potential in his behavior. Even when he’s finally forced to be in charge and gets a chance to prove himself, he still seems to have no particular skills or abilities. Rebels are likable, and poor impulse control can be charming in an eccentric genius or troubled warrior. But Hopper is impulsive and dumb. A rebel from humble beginnings can easily win over an audience. But Hopper seems to come from a good family, and he certainly doesn’t seem ignorant. On the contrary, he appears to be decently educated and well read. He’s just too stupid to understand or appreciate what he has “learned,” the opposite of a diamond in the rough. He’s not a humble janitor who happens to be a math genius. He’s a moron who can quote Homer.
Maybe his girlfriend wants to marry him because she senses that he’s very lucky (a trait she seems to share). I can imagine people outside the barrier realizing that Hopper’s there and saying to themselves, “That’s just who we need to take the helm in a situation like this—a lucky idiot.” The movie could be so much better if Alex Hopper were more a man and less a boy.
Early on the movie establishes the dynamic between the Hopper brothers. Stone is responsible. Alex is not ready to grow up. He’s an overgrown child who relies on his big brother to clean up his messes. What happens when big brother is not there? Does Alex become a man and fight his own battles? Pay attention to how the ending plays out. I think Alex has some Daddy issues and will forever be a man child.
Another weird thing about Hopper. He’s not supposed to have any self-discipline, impulse control, or motivation. So where did he get those defined muscles of his?
Hopper aside, the ending of the movie is far too abrupt to the point of not even making sense. (A part of me is pretty convinced that Hopper died after head trauma following his scuffle with Captain Ngata, and the movie from that point on is a fantasy sequence going on inside his dying mind. Why else would the story end without a bit of resolution about the aliens and a medal of honor for Hopper? This is obviously the fantasy of someone who thought highly of the end of Star Wars as a child.) (I mean A New Hope.)
Overall:
I did not like Battleship, but that was no surprise. It did come as a bit of a surprise to me that the explosions were so extensive, to the point that I found little about the movie even palatable. I did like Gregory D. Ganson, Rihanna, the spirited crew of veterans, and (to a lesser degree) Jesse Plemons, John Tui, and Tadanobu Asano.
However, despite my negative reaction to the film, I will say that my parents and my husband genuinely enjoyed the movie, and my nine-year-old stepson thought it was mind-blowingly awesome. As we left the theater, my sister muttered, “That was like a giant recruiting video for the Navy.” Not hearing her, my stepson declared at exactly that moment, “I’m gonna join the Navy!”
Will you react like my sister or my stepson? After reading this review, you probably know which reaction you’re more likely to have to Battleship.