BATTLESHIP

Good lord, that boy looks like a Golden Retriever.

I’m going to be keeping up with new releases this summer. This week I saw BATTLESHIP so you don’t have to. Spoilers after the jump.

I assume there is really no reason to go into why a movie based on a “naval action game” is a ludicrous beginning for any multi-million dollar franchise investment. While I will watch literally anything, there are limits to anyone’s open-mindedness. First up, at the ticket counter, I have to admit to another human being that I’m going to spend money to watch BATTLESHIP. The girl complimented my Space Ghost t-shirt, and we exchanged some Space Ghost related pleasantries. Then it was my duty to erase any connection that may have been felt by looking her in the eye and purchasing a ticket to motherfucking BATTLESHIP. I think only buying a singular ticket for WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING could have been more shaming. I purchased my popcorn and a White Cherry flavored Icee® and waited in the lobby with the other patrons of the 2PM Friday showing. This was my first trip to the AMC Loews Lakewood Towne Center 12, and the only fact that anyone cares to share about the AMC Loews Lakewood Towne Center 12 is that they have replaced the traditional theater seating arrangement that we have all agreed upon with big, cushy, fully operating reclining love seats with an optional center armrest. The staff of the AMC Loews Lakewood Towne Center 12 was taking an alarming amount of time cleaning the theater between showings, which in my mind immediately conjures up images of two teenagers with stiff bristled brushes scrubbing the cum out of a fully reclining love seat with optional center armrest, either from an amorous couple, or a lonely guy, creaming in his Wranglers watching BATTLESHIP. The amount of time spent in the lobby gave me an opportunity to size up the other fans of adaptations of naval action games. The largest contingent were military, all hanging out in a big group. There were also a few older black ladies, two teenagers and their father, who did not seem thrilled at the prospect of watching BATTLESHIP. Or maybe he just despised his sons and any time spent near them. I really can’t say, although the older boy did defiantly ask his father if he was “talking shit” at one point, which was as hilarious as it was depressing.

The only thing I really knew going into BATTLESHIP was its running time, which is 131 minutes. I can’t imagine that I’ve spent more than 120 total minutes playing the game Battleship in my life, so already, I’m doubling down on my Total Hasbro Hours (THH). Speaking of which, there was audible laughing at the production company logo that begins as a zoetrope, then spins around and around to reveal…the Hasbro logo in big, goofy letters. Really, I can handle movies based on board games, and I have seen worse movies than BATTLESHIP. But I’ve also seen CLUE: THE MOVIE and WALL STREET with Terrance Stamp as the Monopoly Man, and while neither is flawless, they are respectively a fun romp and an Oliver Stone movie. During the running time of BATTLESHIP I had time to think about many things, and one I kept coming back to was the Monopoly movie that Ridley Scott was supposedly going to direct a few years back, which made me wonder what Tony Scott would have done with something like BATTLESHIP. It raises an interesting question – if movies are going to be based around ideas as flimsy as a child’s game, would you rather have someone with intelligence and style directing, or since it’s likely to be shit, should it just go to a youngster with flash but no real ideas? I’m not saying that Peter Berg is without talent, and I even like a few of his movies quite a bit (I have a fond memory of seeing VERY BAD THINGS in the theater with my sister. She sits in the back, I sit toward the front, and we were the only two people laughing in the theater on opening day. Not the only two in the theater, just the only two enjoying themselves), but very little of that talent is on display in BATTLESHIP. I am impressed with the ability to keep action clear, and in that regard there is craftsmanship within the movie, as opposed to TRANSFORMERS where it’s often difficult to surmise where you are or what exactly is going on. Also, the integration of elements of the board game, such as the alien projectiles that look just like the plastic pegs of the game, or the Japanese sailor who teaches everyone how to play Electronic Battleship using buoys and a grid, were handled as well as they could be, but every time one came up, it reminded me that I was watching a movie based on a board game, which is more than a little undermining. At a few points I was able to forget what I was watching, not because it was engrossing, but because it was so generic that it could have been nearly any summer blockbuster.

BATTLESHIP begins with one of my least favorite things ever, which is when a focus group approved Hollywood hunk is given long hair and stubble as shorthand for ‘unattractive loser.’ (See also: LIMITLESS, BOTTLE SHOCK. On second thought, do not also see those. Don’t see BATTLESHIP, either. Go take a walk.) We are introduced to the brothers Hopper and Stone getting drunk in a bar. Hopper is played by Taylor Kitsch, whom I would know as Tim Riggins if I watched ‘Friday Night Lights.’ He looks a lot like Adam DeVine from ‘Workaholics,’ and since his character is an irascible lay about, it was very hard for me not to picture Adam DeVine in the role. Stone is played by Alexander Skarsgård, whom I liked quite a bit in ‘Generation Kill,’ and who is presently employed by ‘True Blood,’ no doubt playing a were-panther or some such nonsense. Anyhow, the two brothers are complete opposites, one a clean cut Navy man, the other an unemployed burrito thief. I really thought that there was going to be a courtroom scene where Hopper was ordered to join the Navy for stealing Mexican food. Instead, we get Stone shaming his brother into service and starting the movie proper.

In the Navy, we are introduced in short order to Rear Admiral Liam Neeson and a crew of colorful characters including the moron (Jesse Plemons), the sexy, cat-faced one (Rihanna), and Jerry Ferrara. (Jerry Ferrara has been in two big movies this summer. I wonder how Adrian Grenier feels about that.) The Navy is participating in war games with Japan, and concurrently, aliens are landing on Earth in response to a signal we sent into deep space toward a planet with Earth-like oceans and an atmosphere. The aliens land in the ocean and engage with the war gaming Navies, who have to team up to fight the insurrection. Jesus Christ, I feel dumber having typed those words out. I can’t imagine writing a 150 page screenplay of that garbage. I don’t know why I’m bothering with plot. Essentially, the movie is a two hour and eleven minute commercial for Hasbro’s Battleship, the United States Navy (which is totally fun and diverse and only one guy dies and he’s busy with True Blood anyway) and, best of all, a Subway tie in that occurs only during a MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE style rampage on a little league field, including an immediate cut to a little girl drinking from a Subway cup after the implied deaths of several women and children. Eat fresh, indeed. I should also note that while watching the credits, I saw Tom Morello credited as ‘Featured Guitarist,’ still clearly raging against the machine after all these years, making it even harder to take that music seriously.

She's a dirty bird.

Throughout the film there appear to be two different types of aliens with different space suits and different colored lights on their ships, and I kept waiting for the war games from the beginning of the film to be paid off in some sort of revelation that these are two sets of aliens from the same planet, already warring on their home planet and now fighting over the resources of the Earth. Or that they were also playing out a larger scale war game with our Navies as unintended collateral damage. This line of thinking did me no favors during BATTLESHIP, which was as straightforward and surface level as possible. Buried within the loud noises, there is also a subplot about not giving up on physical therapy and something about cowardly nerds saving the day. I don’t know. To be honest, right around the big climax, I fell asleep. This is the G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA syndrome. (As a side note, that G.I. Joe movie was worthless, but I am going to see the sequel. Fool me once, shame on you…But if you see the trailer, in a theater with a great sound system, when that synthesizer version of Seven Nation Army kicks in, it looks like stupid fun. Stay tuned.) The bigger and more frenetic and loud a movie becomes, the more likely my body becomes to just shut down. This happened twice during BATTLESHIP for probably 90 seconds apiece. I remember the crew manning the U.S.S. Missouri, and the old timers coming in to help them. These old sailors are clearly not actors - one of them is visibly mouthing another actor’s lines when not speaking, others have the graying horseshoe moustaches of elderly Village People. All in all, they resemble a plumbers union when they march in to save the day, which is right about where I fell asleep, opening my eyes just long enough to see the aforementioned cowardly nerd save the day. When I woke up, Liam Neeson was presenting awards to the Wookie Cyborg, Han Solo and his dead brother Luke Skywalker. The droids watched from the audience. Then Liam Neeson and John Carter went to get a burrito. The end. BUT WAIT – no summer movie can be complete without a post-credits sequence promising a sequel. And in keeping with the rest of the film, the tag is overlong and boring. For half a second, I thought it featured Nick Frost, but obviously that would be far too interesting. I will give them credit for saving the tag for after all of the credits, not that in-the-middle bet hedging bull shit that seems to be the all the rage these days, but it wasn’t really worth it, and it’s worth noting that I was the only one who bothered to stay. At least when I stuck around through that Chris Cornell song at the end of THE AVENGERS it was worth it.

Bought a boat with his large paycheck.

So that’s BATTLESHIP. Taylor Kitsch isn’t bad. Rihanna does what she can. I wonder why she would choose BATTLESHIP as a first movie. I guess if you fail, you can blame the material. If you succeed, you can be the best thing in a turd of a movie. In a lot of ways, the movie seemed to be aiming for an IRON MAN feel, in that it was taking a silly idea and trying to have some fun with it, add in some AC/DC to taste, stir. But it is lacking the spine that Robert Downey Jr. brings to that film. Imagine IRON MAN without RDJ, and replace him with crass commercialism, a pop star, and Turtle from ‘Entourage’ and what you have, I suspect, looks an awful lot like BATTLESHIP.