Battleship Review

“You Sunk My Battleship!”

As a movie fan I look forward to the summer movie season.  Many of my favorite movies are big summer blockbusters.  I love the spectacle of these movies, the larger than life stories, the special effects, the humorous dialogue, and most importantly the fun.  While Battleship is nowhere near this summer’s best movie (that award is currently held firmly by The Avengers with plenty more on the way that look pretty good), it is a fun film that I think audiences will really enjoy if they give it a chance.

Yes this is a movie based on the classic board game where you guess locations on your opponent’s board attempting to locate their ships and sink them before they sink yours.  Yes the film makers decided to have the Navy facing off against alien vessels rather than against another nation.  And while this movie has many reasons why it should not work, and why it should suck, it somehow managed to keep me entertained throughout its entire two hour run time. 

Before I get more into what the movie did right I will take a quick moment to mention some of the films flaws.  In many ways this film feels like another Transformers movie, the alien ships kind of have a similar feel to them, the films score at times feels similar to the score for Transformers, the music, the casting, the humor, and the special effects feel similar.  Thankfully for me I enjoyed the Transformers movies so these were issues for me.  Battleship is a movie where after you have left the theater and you start thinking about the movie you will realize that it has some pretty big plot holes that will leave you shaking your head, and some things occur in the movie for apparently no other reason than to show off some special effects and to show destruction on a massive scale.  But then if you are like me you might think about why this did not bother you during the movie itself?  And maybe if you are like me you will come to the realization that it did not matter simply because you were at the movie to have a good time, and you were. 

So then you might be wondering what is good about the movie other than the fact that it is fun.  Battleship features some very good special effects.  I really liked the look of the alien vessels, as well as the actual appearance of the aliens.  The film makers do a good job of working in some elements of the board game into the movie’s plot that I found creative (though I am upset the Liam Neeson never yelled “YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP!”  That would have been amazing).  Also the music in this movie works very well (both the sound track and the films score) the music just seemed to fit the movie and helped to create excitement and emotion. 

So the big question is… should you see Battleship?  My answer to that is maybe.  While I would eagerly encourage everyone to see The Avengers, I know that Battleship is not for everyone.  However if you enjoy some simple mindless fun than I think you will have good time with this movie.  Try to hit up a matinee showing, or if you don’t get to see it in theaters then Netflix or Redbox it. 

I give Battleship 3 and half popcorn buckets out of 5.