Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Bullshit vs Dung

I bought this DVD along with the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven, and after watching it once - if you count forwarding the second half at super speed because of the predictable storyline. A brainless invalid could tell you what would happen even before the actual events in the film occurred - and totally regretted the purchase. Yes, it was discounted to 13 euros from 24 but it's still no excuse. Trash is .... well, for lack of a better word, trash. What do you call cowpat? Bullshit? Dung? Both would fit this movie perfectly and then some.

Don't get me wrong, for all you alien and predator fans out there. The individual series were good. Hell, I grew up watching predator with Arnold in my teen days, and aliens I was kinda forced to because my brother was obsessed with it. Nonetheless they were great flicks as standalones. Put together, it seemed natural that it would and should rock. But the script is so thin, it's laughable. It goes along the line of - humans are curious at energy fluctuation. They explore out of natural greed. They find themselves where they shouldn't really be doing what they shouldn't be doing with all the basic cliches of getting into trouble. To tell the truth, the humans deserved their fate. They had it coming and I couldn't care less, to show the lack of empathy between the audience and the cast.

Too many cooks make a mess out of whatever it is they are beating to death. Same here. Too many minor cast members. No character development other than 2 to 3 lines then WHACK ZAP, death by facehugger, stomach explosion, spear through the groin, electric constricting net, garotte, sliced in 2, blablabla the list goes on. The cast are merely accessories, or to put it simply, Cannon fodder. I felt that whoever was making the film couldn't coordinate where he wanted the main focus to be at. Is it the main characters? No, because they die too damn early and too damn fast to make an impact on the audience. Is it the alien? Hell no, other than some slash here, jump there, hiss here, hop there, it's all standard boring fare. Is it the predator? Nah.... been there done that. And they died too damn fast. So much for being called predators. More like chew-up rubber toys that your puppy plays with.

The list goes on and on and on and on. If you check out the takings at the US box office, it opened at number 1 and then promptly shot out of the list as people realized the hype was just a cover up for a crap fest. No doubt this is an "old movie" having been released 2 odd years ago. I was curious about it but I refused to pay the crazy European cinema prices with popcorn and nachos, etc. or the out of this world DVD prices so I waited until sale time came on older titles. Usually I score good bargains but this time, I got a totally hopeless dud.

I guess they wanted to milk this franchise for all that it was worth before it was worthless, but to go out this way cheapens the rest of the earlier flicks by association. I'm sure with a decent script it could have gone further. On the bright side, the dvd will make a good drink coaster, window decoration, frisbee, etc.

I give this movie an equally crappy 2/10 on the moo meter.... even the cows would agree. It deserves to be left out to pasture. Under a huge pile of dung. Far away from humanity.

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