So what’s next on the Hasbro agenda? Will Smith as “Sugar Daddy” in the action-comedy Candy Land? Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin fighting over Atlantic City blocks in Monopoly? How about the national diction championships as a venue for Scrabble? And, last but not least, watch quarterhorse Rainbow Sunshine overcome the handicap of being four feet tall, 3,000 lbs and blue as she wins the Kentucky Derby in the big screen adaptation of My Little Pony (just wait, it will be like if Secretariat ate Seabiscuit).
Meet Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), the worst protagonist Hollywood has seen fit to give us since Hugh Jackman in Real Steel. In the opening scenes, he is so taken with blonde thang Brooklyn Decker that he robs a 7-11 for a chicken burrito to appease her. Gets better. For reasons known only to the producers, he wakes up on his brother’s couch and not in jail. The brother, Commander Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgård, seriously? He spells his name with an Angstrom? I gotta get me one o’ those) , lays down the law, “you will join the Navy.” This is a fine pretense so long as you assume the Navy lowers its standards from, well, having some. I guess he got in on the “brothers sail free” program. Next scene, I swear I’m not making this up, he’s a Naval Officer, fast-tracked through the inspirational Cap’n Crunch School for Advanced Nautical Leadership Training and Audible Breakfast Management.
You dress this clown up, give him an ounce of responsibility, and he’s still a jackass, demonstrating all the things the Navy prizes like tardiness, disrespect, and cowardice. Then he has a little heart-to-heart with BMOC Liam Neeson. Liam lays down the law – our man is given the weekend to ship up or shape out. Yes, I said that on purpose. There are just so many things wrong with this picture … I don’t honestly know where to begin. Since when does the military, any military, have a “maybe” policy? Peter Berg, Hoeber brothers, did your experience of military procedure come from a lifetime of Beetle Bailey cartoons?
Naturally, when the aliens come a set up the board, Jackass is promoted to Captain
through the Navy’s controversial “he who smelt it, dealt it” system of advancement where his first order of business is a vehement death wish. I pretty much stopped paying attention at this moment and tuned out for an hour or so. Kill aliens? Don’t kill aliens? I don’t give a crap.
It’s hard to believe a well meaning film can be this bad. And bad it was, with an especially ugly and ridiculous pander to the Greatest Generation late in the film. It didn’t occur to anybody that any true World War II veteran would be, minimum, in his 90s by now. So, hey, let’s employ oldish-but-mobile US vets and pretend technology never advanced between 1941 and whatever Navy you served.
And when Battleship wasn’t letting morons play captain and grandfathers play Scotty, it was stealing liberally from Under Siege, Independence Day, Star Trek, Top Gun, Master and Commander, Jenga, Pick-Up Sticks, Foosball … ironically choosing much of the worst each has to offer. You know, if you’re gonna steal, pick better.
And if you’re gonna watch this more than once, you don’t deserve my attention. Ever.
Rated PG-13, 131 Minutes
D: Peter Berg
W: Erich Hoeber, Jon Hoeber
Genre: Bored Game
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Hasbro Licensing Executives
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Offended Aliens
