Battleship

• Directed by Peter Berg
• April 3, 2012 (Tokyo) / May 18, 2012 (US)
• Based on the boardgame Battleship by Hasbro (Milton Bradley)

When alien forces land during a joint naval exercise, the various ships must join together to thwart the alien menace.

Despite being a movie from outward appearances that seems right up my alley, I avoided Battleship for quite some time. Something about it just didn’t click with me despite indications of good visuals and sea battles that are heavy on science fiction-an extreme rarity in movies. I can’t say I hated this, but it certainly fumbled the ball at far too many points making what could’ve been a very good oddball movie into something that was only just okay.

The first thing against this is that it’s based on a naval strategy game that at no point contains space aliens, yet we get an alien invasion movie out of it. Really? I am not sure how that all connects. This is barely related to the Milton Bradley game from which it supposedly draws inspiration.

The second thing against this is the relationship which forms a significant romantic subplot here. Naval Lt. Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) is dating Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker) who is the daughter of the intimidating Adm. Terrance Shane (Liam Neeson) and is terrified to speak to him to do the traditional thing and ask Adm. Shane permission to marry his daughter. It has all the sophistication of something from the CW. These are adults acting like teen soap characters.

Liam Neeson’s Shane feels like a character plucked from a different movie. All the other performers are not taking things nearly as seriously as Neeson is. Up until the closing moments he takes things very seriously in his performance. He shouts and is angry and concerned when appropriate but for most of the others attacking aliens does not seem as concerning as it should.

There is an excessive level of humor in Battleship. I’m not against jokes in movies. No matter how serious a film or concept is, a joke is not necessarily a detriment. There are plenty of good reasons to use them, but too many jokes can mute the excitement or any other feelings you may be generating making a movie extremely tepid. And this does that all too often.

For some reason the alien designs-at least outside of the armor they wear-remind me of Captain Ahab. Nobody says it, but I just thought of Captain Ahab looking at them. Was it some kind of intentional action upon the creature designers to look like a stereotypical evil sea captain or just an unfortunate accident? I’m thinking it was intentional.

Visually Battleship is pretty good. At least when it comes to the spaceships. But some of the other effects lack refinement. They either didn’t put the effort to give enough detail or ran out of time and hoped to fudge things a little bit.

Despite being an alien invasion film with battles and explosions there’s no sense of danger and no feeling. And perhaps that goes the aforementioned heavy use of humor. The pace just never picks up and you never feel as if the aliens are a genuine threat. They even toss in a ticking clock element which does nothing to make things feel more serious.

I give them props for the use of actual veterans here. And truth be told they have some of the better lines and better moments in the movie. Then again I am a bit of a sucker for the old guard teaching the newbies a thing or two or just showing them that they’re still capable when that whole idea is done right. And it was done right here. I do like the line where the one guy says, “Let’s drop some lead on those mother…” and he gets cut off. Just a great delivery from a guy who probably is not a seasoned actor at all.

Somehow they managed to get a little over two hours out of this movie. I think you could’ve easily cut a half hour and made a much tighter and much more exciting movie. If they excised the romantic subplot and cut the humor this would’ve been a good movie. Or a bad movie that was good. It has plenty of elements to be enjoyable but with heavy humor and unnecessary subplots that really don’t have much to do with the outcome, it’s just so much wasted effort.

Battleship is just mediocre despite the premise. With slow pacing and little excitement this is something you can certainly skip.