Filmic Pulp

I wanted to go into this review saying something that other (bigger, better) reviewers hadn’t said–that this movie was really good.

And I felt like I could’ve written that review until the emotional ending that required someone other than Keanu Reeves and Will Smith’s kid. They can’t act. Jennifer Connelly can.

The plot is about aliens who want to destroy the human race because we’re destroying the planet. Seriously, if you thought WALL-E was too much leftist propaganda, suffer through the third act of this fucking film. It is rife with conversations between Neo and Connelly about the Earth and that we’re good people, we just don’t act right sometimes and yadda yadda yadda. It’s a little grating listening to Keanu Reeves philosophy after just watching him in the Replacements a few days ago.

When the script calls for an emotional peak between characters, we are left in the cold with piss-poor acting. Reeves is a lot like a smaller Arnold Schwarzenegger: he was built for one type of roll (wooden) and when something more is asked of him it comes off as pisspoor and simply unbearable.

Something more is asked of him from the moment we see John Cleese as a Biological Altruist (really!? Yes, really. The same guy from A  Fish Called Wanda and Monty Python.) and he stares at a speaker that’s playing Bach, as explained by Jennifer Connelly, and states (woodenly), “It’s beautiful.” Thanks, buddy. I don’t expect an alien to be eloquent in their vernacular, but really, I expect at least something that’s not a filmic cliche at least.

The CGI is well done, especially for the giant, barely-explained, metallic Colossus of Rhodes. Apparently, the sound for the film overloaded the speakers that I saw the movie at and every time he would blow something up, it would twirp out for a second. I thought it was a bold sound-design choice, but, instead, it was just a fuckup.

Anywho, don’t see this movie. It’s fucking horrible. I saw it because I love Jennifer Connelly, but she can’t save this wreck. I’m sorry that my review came to the same conclusion as most others.