Harrison Ford starring in 'Grumpy Old Men Go to Space'
This weekend we went to go see it for ourselves (in IMAX, no 3D for this one although I think it would have worked well given all the zero G possibilities) and I'm fairly certain that most of the key elements of the novel were covered. There have been others that have already noted some striking similarities to other sci-fi classics including:
- Various aliens as bugs motifs (which is odd given there are far more insects on Earth than humans so maybe all the aliens ought to look like us)
- Jet flying into the mothership (and central control of drone ships from it)
- Harrison Ford (doing anything - he is becoming a cliche)
The film is visually striking and the pace is well metered throughout most of the film. The performances were fairly uneven though. We'll start with the standouts:
- Ben Kingsly - He doesn't always convince, but this time he does a good job although hes not given a lot of screen time. The tattoos probably deserve half of the credit.
- Hailee Steinfield - This girl has got Charisma. You may recall her standout performance in True Grit a few years ago (you know the one where Jeff Bridges sounded like he was chewing on biscuits the whole time). She practically steals the show in Ender's Game and deservedly so.
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| Jennifer Lawrence may be good with a bow and arrow but Hailee can act... |
And that's about it. There's a lot of other folks running around doing things but by and large they're forgettable or ineffective. The two main stars; Asa Butterfield and Harrison Ford fall into the ineffective category, the rest are just forgettable.
Don't get us wrong; the film is hugely entertaining - much more so than recent sci-fi films like Star Trek (something about Darkness - BTW - why the heck is every film Dark now???) and After Earth (which was just silly), however Ender's Game could have been a lot more had the right talent been applied. Perhaps most disappointing was the rapid juxtaposition from the movie climax to the set up for the sequels. More time and care should have been applied to constructing that segue.
Another bizarre aspect of this film was its use of video game like animation - they were trying to approximate Xbox 3000 I guess; anyway it didn't come off well at all. Assume the movie is taking place more than 50 years from now and then ask yourself why the graphics don't look any better than PS 4?
Here is our Raving Ratings grid:
|
Category
|
Score
|
|
Acting
|
5.5
|
|
Story
|
8
|
|
FX
|
9
|
|
Cinematography
|
8
|
|
Animation
|
4
|
|
Script
|
6
|
|
Cliches*
(low score=high cliche factor)
|
3
|
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Total
|
6
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Copyright 2013, Raving Reviews
