Battleship

Battleship- PG-13

By Jonathan Goodsell

I was extremely skeptic going into this film. I heard how bad it did in the box office and had read all the bad reviews. But I wasn't about to shoot down one of my favorite childhood games, so I gave it a shot; especially when I heard my dad was buying the tickets. However, I'm sorry to say it lived up to it's reputation. Battleship is just another alien invasion film but with a naval side instead of army. The U.S. creates a communications satellite to bounce signals into deep space to a planet believed to be inhabitable. The aliens that receive the signal follow it back to earth and then all heck breaks loose. Starring Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, and Liam Neeson, this Michael Bay reminiscent film was better than most, but still not great. 

I'll give it the credit of being a lot better than the trailer made it out to look. The plot was actually a lot better than I expected, better then most of it's type. It wasn't just pumped full of CGI alien attacks like I was led to believe. They actually put a good deal of thought and wove the plot into the effects pretty well, making it watchable. The acting was decent I guess, a little cheesy at times. It wasn't anything spectacular. What I found almost... pathetic was the attempt to live up to the board game's name. It was only like a two minute scene. Granted it did play a major role in the battle against the aliens, but I think they could have stretched it out. So was the film bad? Not really, they could have done a whole lot worse. Did it leave a lot to be desired? Definitely. But I wouldn't rule it out, it's worth seeing once.
As expected, there was a quite a bit of destruction. Both alien and human ships were destroyed, and attacks on cities caused for many buildings and structures to be destroyed. However, the action wasn't really that bad. It was mostly explosions. You never really saw any deaths or blood or anything really. There was no hand to hand combat or close range gun fire, it was just cannon fire back and forth between alien space ships and the naval battle ships. There was some mildly strong language throughout, but that was completely expected from this type of film. I mean, it's a war movie. But other than that, the film wasn't to bad.
Did I like this movie? Sure, it wasn't to bad. I mostly enjoyed a five minute segment in the beginning, but the rest wasn't that bad. I wouldn't say this is a must see. But it wouldn't hurt to see once. So in my reviewer opinion, Battleship gets a hard earned 5.5/10