Battleship

This movie's getting a bad rap because the commercials make it look like Transformers and it's an adaptation of a board game, but it's actually a lot of fun.

The story doesn't really work over all, I think, but as a summer action flick it works. The aliens aren't invincible (for the most part), so seeing them square off with Navy ships is fun. The best part of the movie is actually like the game, where they're blind and trying to pinpoint the enemy ship's location. It's more about tactics than explosions, but of course the movie doesn't stay with that formula.

There are elements of the movie I don't like, where the aliens deploy weapons like big spinning things that wreck everything (but target bridges and baseball diamonds instead of enemy battleships), and superpowered alien footsoldiers in HALO outfits just start trashing everything. These are too powerful to be believable compared to other scenes where they're vulnerable to machine guns and missiles even though they have force field technology.

Over all, I enjoyed it. The need to make it a big special FX movie hurts its credibility, but it's a summer scifi so it's okay so long as it's all in good fun. It also has a lot of humor in it and is much more fun to watch than I thought it would be walking in. If you like movies like "Independence Day" you ought to enjoy this one.