“Battleship” is the worst humans-fighting-aliens movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of humans-fighting-aliens movies.
Perhaps we should have been prepared for this cosmic joke of an action-adventure, as it’s based on the classic Hasbro board game — an absurdity its filmmakers have embraced with good humor, but not hit with good aim. While the game itself accounts for maybe 2% of the content (there are battleships, and at one point there’s a grid that must be analyzed), its spirit is entirely intact: This movie is impersonal, plastic and has lots of easy-to-misplace pieces.
Taylor Kitsch is Hopper, a miscreant with a heart of gold introduced in a beer commercial-type bar, being urged to shape up by his Navy officer brother (Alexander Skarsgard) and lusting after the daughter (Brooklyn Decker) of the admiral (Liam Neeson). Some time later, he’s in the Navy, hoping to marry the admiral's daughter before shipping out for some inter-naval games that bring several thousand sailors off the coast of Hawaii.
RELATED: PETER BERG BRINGS BOARD GAME TO BIG SCREEN
That’s handy, because soon, wouldn’t you know it, aliens show up. They were hinted at in an early sequence, when bearded geeks worry about a signal sent off that invites other life forms to come and say hi. Turns out the ones who RSVP set up an invisible wall around ships in the water, then don’t react well when they’re fired upon.
The angry E.T.s send whirling buzzsaw-type objects which look like giant socket screws to cut through cities, and their spacecraft, which had plunged right into the ocean for some undisclosed reason, pop up and try to sink our battleships. Some aliens do end up on land, where one gets into a wrestling match with a double-amputee veteran.
These not-scary, plan-less humanoid aliens, seen with their helmets off for a maximum of perhaps five minutes, look like Mickey Rourke with a goatee made of glass, suggesting some effects designer fell asleep on the job. There’s some TV chatter overheard about a “worldwide invasion,” but that little plotline seems undeveloped.