Kidzworld reviews the action-packed movie Battleship, featuring Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgard!
By: Lynn Barker
What if you were in the peacetime Navy, just chillin’ in beautiful Hawaii on your battleship, doing some practice maneuvers when..whammo!..aliens land in the ocean and start trying to kick your booty and take over our planet? It’s lock and load time!
Courtesy of Universal Picutres
Battle of the Bros
The backstory of the touchy relationship between slacker Taylor Kitsch as Lt. Alex Hopper and his by-the-book Navy bro Stone (Alexander Skarsgard from “True Blood”) is set up in a funny way and once Alex has reluctantly joined the Navy, we meet his girl Sam (pretty Brooklyn Decker) whose daddy (Liam Neeson) just happens to be Admiral of the fleet (yikes). We meet ship’s gunner Cora Raikes (Rihanna), a tough but so cute crewmember on Alex and Stone’s ship.
Maneuvers at Sea
While physical therapist Sam makes a strong but reluctant Army vet amputee, played by real-life Army vet and amputee Gregory D. Gadson, take a walk up a big Hawaiian mountain, Alex and his crew are at sea with a multi-national fleet doing some war game training exercises. Alex learns that his slacker attitude is going to get him kicked out of the Navy.
Aliens Attack!
First a big ship, uh..thingie crashes into Hong Kong. Later, major Splash!, several mondo-huge metal objects crash into the ocean near Hawaii where our guys are out on their mission. After we cautiously check them out, they open up and start shooting! We shoot back!
Rihanna with her gunCourtesy of Universal Picutres
Battle on Sea and Land
While Alex and Raikes are fighting at sea, alien soldiers land on the island and menace Sam and her Army vet patient who figure out that this particularly nasty E.T. wants to phone home and might use our deep space satellite to do it. Can Sam, Army dude and a really frightened communications scientist stop the creepy critters? Can Alex grow up fast and get responsible enough to lead his crew at sea?
Wrapping Up
This big, early summer popcorn movie is full of corny dialogue and relationships you’ve seen before but at least we meet the characters and get to know them before all heck breaks loose. Once it does, you won’t be bored as the battle rages with cool special effects that sometimes defy logic (Hey, can our huge old battleship’s heavy, giant guns really turn around THAT fast?).
A battle-weary Taylor KitschCourtesy of Universal Picutres
While you can get impressed with all the SPFX eye candy, you can also note that it’s cool that Americans are teamed up with Japanese sailors and officers whose ancestors bombed Pearl Harbor, bringing the U.S. into WW2. Hey, that was a long time ago, it’s a new generation and let’s kick booty together! Also very cool if corny is the addition of elderly veterans from that war to join the young guys in saving the day.
Rihanna makes a pretty hot kick butt chick, Taylor is cute and, if you can get past some of the corny, melodramatic stuff and you liked movies like Transformers, you’ll probably have a blast watchin’ the human vs. alien action.
Battleship Movie Rating:
