Reviews

I really wanted to like this film. It had a great premise, was shot in my hometown (so I got to see quite a few local places I recognised) and featured some great Aussie actors from our tv screens over the past 10 years. But it just didn't make sense.

I feel it would have been much better had the way it was told been more straightforward with a twist at the end explaining the multiple personality thing (like in Identity). Having the story told to the cops in a flashback/voiceover type of way just removed all tension because you already knew most of what was going on. Scenes like the driver getting away from the cops when he's driving a sports car with a fancy paint job and personalised plates just didn't seem likely. It felt like another one of these movies where the director wants to get noticed early on in their career so they do weird things to get noticed instead of just making a decent straight forward film. With a runtime of 80 minutes it actually seemed to drag on a bit and there was a distinct lack of action considering the movie poster.

Like Ready Player One, the movie has been changed so much from the books it's unrecognisable to anyone who has read the books, but unlike Ready Player One, this movie is not good. Without even judging the movie on the changes made from the book, it is just badly made and I expected a lot more form someone like Kenneth Branagh. Judi Dench looks like she doesn't even know why she is there or what she is saying. The only actor that put in a decent performance was the one playing Holly Short. The other performances are average at best, with some being a bit over the top and distracting. There was one moment at the end of the film where Colin Farrell seems to changes seats in the helicopter 3 or 4 different times, which to me is a cardinal sin when you are making a big blockbuster movie costing millions of dollars. The worst part of all is that the author Eoin Colfer actually was happy with the movie and had some say in it even though it barely resembles his books. Disney is really scraping the bottom of the barrel to bring out new content for their streaming service.

I don't even know where to start with the stupid changes from the book that just cause distractions.... A 12 year old criminal mastermind who only ever wears a suit becomes a 12 year old whining boy who likes to surf A highly trained bodyguard who never reveals his real name unless he is dying as that is part of his training, has everyone call him by his real name, and cries a lot The bodyguards 18 year sister who has been through the same training as him, becomes his 12 year old niece who runs around screaming in terror the whole time even though she is trained in all sorts of martial arts Commander Root changes from a grumpy old man who doesn't think a female elf should be part of LEP-Recon to a caring grumpy old woman Holly Short becomes a over-emotional teenage fairy And that's just the main ones I can remember in my state of disbelief at the badness of this film

There's no doubt this was a big budget movie with so much money spent on sfx and acting talent, and what was left over was spent on the story. I'm sorta glad it's over 'cause I don't know if I could take many more fights where the good guys hit the bad guy 100 times until they are almost dead, then the bad guy comes back and hits the good guy 100 times, yadda, yadda, yadda. The only thing in this movie that wasn't predictable when watching was the explanation of time travel which did not make sense at all and how captain america didn't completely mess up the future with his actions at the end still confuses me. I had some problems with how at the big battle when spiderman comes through the portal he is slinging webs at something to swing into battle yet there is nothing around him in the sky that he could possibly secure his webs to. I also had an issue with Captain Marvel flying in and singlehandly destroying a spaceship but then when she has the gauntlet suddenly all these female heroes come out of nowhere to protect her. If only they played a beyonce song and had a big girlpower sign in the background so we understood that girls can be heroes #metoo. Scarlet Witch goes from almos destroying Thanos to a sidekick for Captain Marvel in the space of a couple of minutes. Maybe cut 30 minutes off the movie and it would've been a lot more entertaining. As it stands it's worth watching, just don't try to convince me it's the best movie of all time and worthing of a ten out of ten score. In fact don't even try and convince me it's the best marvel movie in the series. Come to think of it, with the earth under such a massive threat you'd think they could have called on more then just the Avengers. Where the X-Men and Fantastic Four on holidays?