Unlike the cast, crew and various other fake-tanned patrons, I actually paid to go and see this premiere, so you can expect a more objective review than the previous.
I came out of this screening happy, I had a good time which is the main thing.
The movie is apparently being sold as Independence Day meets Shaun Of The Dead, but it fails in being comical enough throughout to earn that tagline. There simply wasn't enough comedy or parody of alien invasion movies.
The movie starts off with a cast of binge drinking characters that we don't know well enough to care about. This immediately disconnected me from all of them because they came across as ASBO awarded yobs who drink as much as they can before jumping into a fight, which, as one of the characters indicates at the start, is the norm.
This thankfully ends and they become more likable later on. However, it's virtually impossible to take Sean Brosnan's role as a ex-Black Ops military man seriously based on the irrational way he behaves at the start, the way in which he speaks to other military men and the ill thought out choices he makes towards the end of the film.
A film should firmly establish it's tone at the start. You need to set up an expectation for the viewer. Unfortunately, this was not handled well for the first 5/10 minutes of the film. Shaun Of The Dead, for example, explicitly sets the tone in the opening titles.
The opening titles of this movie were close ups of women's butts and people grinding in a club to dubstep. It felt self indulgent to the maker and not beneficial to the movie as a whole.
I had to try and not to laugh at parts since we were sitting near the cast and crew, but in hindsight, I feel like I should have been laughing and that I was confused by the tone of the subject matter.
The script wavers from being funny, serious, dramatic, immature and outright adolescent in parts. Sometimes these wavers are done quite well, but a lot of the time it was a little confusing.
Sometimes, these tone changes worked. One example of a dramatic tone change would be a horrifically brutal fight scene devoid of humour, in which a man tries to use a submachine gun on a child, which is then underlined by our lead (Sean Brosnan) doing a comical strut at the end to put his coat on. The audience were in fits of laughter at that point and it was a memorable moment. This was done very well, but it was a lone stitch in a larger tapestry.
There are moments when the film plunges into borderline plagiarism of other movies. I'll give the director/writer the benefit of the doubt that these were homage, they still felt out of place.
For example, a fight scene in a supermarket suddenly becomes a mimic of the famous fight scene in Old Boy which didn't seem entirely suitable at the time. Another example, which felt a lot more out of place, were two moments where Bianca Bree quotes Blade Runner in a monotone way to the main lead.
This later turns out to make no sense whatsoever as she turned out to be an alien. So... an alien that wants to wipe out mankind, but that has an appreciation of 20th century Earth cinema. This was very confusing to me, partly because I still had not determined what the tone of this movie should be. If it's meant to be funny, then fair enough, but it's just not that funny either. These weren't funny lines from Blade Runner either, they were from Roy Batty's death scene.
All those moments... seemed wide of the mark. If you're making a parody of alien invasion movies, what does Blade Runner or Old Boy have to do with it?
One moment that stands out as being particularly awkward was when an old man (that we'd never seen before) just turned up in the street and started reeling off a *lot* of expository dialogue. It went on for a long time, killed the pace of the movie and was poorly delivered. Astonishingly, parts of this speech were repeated in flashbacks later on! This was hilarious, but it seemed unintentionally so.
JCVD makes a welcome cameo in this movie towards the end. He needlessly pops up in flashes for the first half of the film. There were many flashbacks during the first half, but I think they were flashes of the later parts of the movie... so flashforwards? I have no idea, but their relevance was very confusing whenever these popped up.
I'd like to finish with some positive points about this movie. Despite all it's flaws, I felt that the cast and crew put a lot of effort into making a movie that they wanted to make and within the means they had to make it. I never got bored whilst watching the movie, even the old man who reeled off his speech in the middle was mildly amusing.
I was very happy to see JCVD on screen once more, even if for a short amount of time. This movie also has some phenomenal fight scenes. One particular fight in a pharmacy was absolutely brutal and really had me on the edge of my seat, no small feat to pull off. This was right up there with John Carpenter's fight scene in They Live.
I also have to tip my hat towards the makers of this film for actually using explosive squibs for when one guy got shot.
I feel that had the script been way more streamlined towards a parody of alien invasion movies, this would have been a winner.
I came out of this screening happy, I had a good time which is the main thing.
The movie is apparently being sold as Independence Day meets Shaun Of The Dead, but it fails in being comical enough throughout to earn that tagline. There simply wasn't enough comedy or parody of alien invasion movies.
The movie starts off with a cast of binge drinking characters that we don't know well enough to care about. This immediately disconnected me from all of them because they came across as ASBO awarded yobs who drink as much as they can before jumping into a fight, which, as one of the characters indicates at the start, is the norm.
This thankfully ends and they become more likable later on. However, it's virtually impossible to take Sean Brosnan's role as a ex-Black Ops military man seriously based on the irrational way he behaves at the start, the way in which he speaks to other military men and the ill thought out choices he makes towards the end of the film.
A film should firmly establish it's tone at the start. You need to set up an expectation for the viewer. Unfortunately, this was not handled well for the first 5/10 minutes of the film. Shaun Of The Dead, for example, explicitly sets the tone in the opening titles.
The opening titles of this movie were close ups of women's butts and people grinding in a club to dubstep. It felt self indulgent to the maker and not beneficial to the movie as a whole.
I had to try and not to laugh at parts since we were sitting near the cast and crew, but in hindsight, I feel like I should have been laughing and that I was confused by the tone of the subject matter.
The script wavers from being funny, serious, dramatic, immature and outright adolescent in parts. Sometimes these wavers are done quite well, but a lot of the time it was a little confusing.
Sometimes, these tone changes worked. One example of a dramatic tone change would be a horrifically brutal fight scene devoid of humour, in which a man tries to use a submachine gun on a child, which is then underlined by our lead (Sean Brosnan) doing a comical strut at the end to put his coat on. The audience were in fits of laughter at that point and it was a memorable moment. This was done very well, but it was a lone stitch in a larger tapestry.
There are moments when the film plunges into borderline plagiarism of other movies. I'll give the director/writer the benefit of the doubt that these were homage, they still felt out of place.
For example, a fight scene in a supermarket suddenly becomes a mimic of the famous fight scene in Old Boy which didn't seem entirely suitable at the time. Another example, which felt a lot more out of place, were two moments where Bianca Bree quotes Blade Runner in a monotone way to the main lead.
This later turns out to make no sense whatsoever as she turned out to be an alien. So... an alien that wants to wipe out mankind, but that has an appreciation of 20th century Earth cinema. This was very confusing to me, partly because I still had not determined what the tone of this movie should be. If it's meant to be funny, then fair enough, but it's just not that funny either. These weren't funny lines from Blade Runner either, they were from Roy Batty's death scene.
All those moments... seemed wide of the mark. If you're making a parody of alien invasion movies, what does Blade Runner or Old Boy have to do with it?
One moment that stands out as being particularly awkward was when an old man (that we'd never seen before) just turned up in the street and started reeling off a *lot* of expository dialogue. It went on for a long time, killed the pace of the movie and was poorly delivered. Astonishingly, parts of this speech were repeated in flashbacks later on! This was hilarious, but it seemed unintentionally so.
JCVD makes a welcome cameo in this movie towards the end. He needlessly pops up in flashes for the first half of the film. There were many flashbacks during the first half, but I think they were flashes of the later parts of the movie... so flashforwards? I have no idea, but their relevance was very confusing whenever these popped up.
I'd like to finish with some positive points about this movie. Despite all it's flaws, I felt that the cast and crew put a lot of effort into making a movie that they wanted to make and within the means they had to make it. I never got bored whilst watching the movie, even the old man who reeled off his speech in the middle was mildly amusing.
I was very happy to see JCVD on screen once more, even if for a short amount of time. This movie also has some phenomenal fight scenes. One particular fight in a pharmacy was absolutely brutal and really had me on the edge of my seat, no small feat to pull off. This was right up there with John Carpenter's fight scene in They Live.
I also have to tip my hat towards the makers of this film for actually using explosive squibs for when one guy got shot.
I feel that had the script been way more streamlined towards a parody of alien invasion movies, this would have been a winner.