Humanity beams out a signal to an alien planet with Earthlike conditions in 2006 and one man even warns against doing it.  Meanwhile, undisciplined Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) breaks into a convenience store to get a chicken burrito to impress a girl and ends up getting tasered by the police.  His older brother, Stone, demands that Alex enlists in the Navy (where Stone is already enlisted).   Years later, Stone and Alex are part of an international war games hosted by the United States in Hawaii.   During the war games out at sea, Alex and Stone with three naval destroyers (one of them being from the Japanese Navy) investigate the landing of some alien spaceships in the Pacific Ocean.  The aliens create a big energy field around the patch of ocean surrounding Hawaii.  It is up to undisciplined slacker Alex Hopper and a crew of sailors to stop the alien invasion as the clock ticks down for the aliens to send a message to their home world.

BATTLESHIP is a dumb and fun summer popcorn film in the tradition of Michael Bay films like ARMAGEDDON and the first TRANSFORMERS.  Sometimes, BATTLESHIP is quiet smart and even gives nods to the board game it is very loosely based on.  The Japanese Captain is one of the smartest characters in the film.  Alex seeks wisdom and experience from the Captain.   Too bad Alexander Skarsgaard is underused in the film as Stone Hopper and so is Liam Nesson with his role as the Admiral whose daughter that Alex is in love with.   The relationship and the male pissing matches are just dumb popcorn fodder.  What we are really here for when we watch this kind of movie is to see things go boom while humans fight aliens.

The big trouble BATTLESHIP has is being released so closely after THE AVENGERS which continues to reign supreme at the box office.  I suggest to Universal Pictures to play up the world box office figures (the film has already made over $200 million overseas) because I don’t think it will be a big hit in the theaters.   Out of the two films starring Taylor Kitsch, I love JOHN CARTER better which has a more concrete script than BATTLESHIP in addition to being a throwback to space opera movies like STAR WARS.  Meanwhile, BATTLESHIP is kinda like the child of ARMAGEDDON with Liam Nesson instead of Bruce Willis and Kitsch in place of Ben Affleck.   See BATTLESHIP for the dumb and fun popcorn flick it is and don’t worry too much about the type of script it has.  I will definitely buy it on Blu-ray since I enjoyed the dumb popcorn fun mixed in with some clever bits.

This movie review is (c)5-21-2012 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com