End of my weekend movie reviews-- Battleship

Since my Saturday post was blasting The Chernobyl Diaries for its total lack of plot (read it here), I feel like I should preface this review with a discussion of expectations.

Though I love both horror and action movies, I have different expectations of each. For horror, I want a strong plot and not cheap scares and unnecessary suspense with no purpose. For action movies, particularly those named after board games or 80's cartoons, my expectations are for a coherent (though not necessarily strong) plot, good pacing, and lots and lots of explosions.

Battleship most certainly met, and in fact exceeded, my expectations.

Let me be clear, here: this is a dumb movie. The premise is thin but I was able to swallow it with a healthy dose of my willing suspension of disbelief. The acting was actually surprisingly strong, excepting Brooklyn Decker and Taylor Kitsch (who, unfortunately, had the lead roles). And the explosions were awesome. And I mean totally amazing.

But yes, this is a Hasboro production. The general story is that NASA and other "scientist looking people" establish a communications station in Hawaii and start beaming a message towards Planet G, a planet millions  of lightyears away  that closely resembles Earth. The funny thing is, they never seem to expect Earth to answer.

Then you have our protagonist Hopper (Kitsch), the standard screw-up who was pulled into the Navy by his very responsible (and very sexy) older brother Stone, played by the immensely capable Alexander Skarsgaard. Somehow Hopper goes from being arrested in the opening sequence for a little B&E to impress a pretty girl to being third in command on a Navy destroyer despite his continually screwing up in the next sequence.

Hopper is seconds away from being kicked out of the Navy when very hostile visitors from Planet G invade, and he is forced to save the world. The aliens want to take over and call Earth their own. To do this, they need to set up communications, and suddenly it is Hopper versus the entire invading force to keep that from happening.

As I said-- the premise is thin. It's a dumb movie, but I enjoyed the heck out of it. And a special hats off to Rihanna. I have never been a big fan of her music, but as a hard ass naval officer, she was phenomenal. She carried almost every scene she shared with the lethargic Kitsch.

The verdict-- its worth seeing if you like big explosions, and I would say see it on the big screen. But if your town has a cheap theater, I would wait until it gets there!