The special effects are beautiful but unconvincing. The main characters are unlikeable, the science is absurd, the story is predictable and the movie is funnier than it was meant to be.
But at least you can't really say it was boring.
The history lessons here are a bit sketchy, but the story is fun ride from start to finish (and much smarter than it appears at first glance), the characters are hilarious, and it has the best 80s soundtrack I've heard in any film.
I remember the earlier movies in this series being worth a watch. This time, though, the jokes seem to be even lazier than I remember.
Set up: Johnny needs to do X.
Punchline: Johnny fails to do X (but plot advances anyway).
Rinse, repeat.
The beginning of the movie (at the school) was actually a highlight for me, as one of the few parts of the movie where the jokes were something other than the repetitive jokes about Johnny's incompetence that burned me out half way into the film.
I can't comment on the entire film, as I gave up on it within about 20 minutes. The acting is incredibly substandard, but I can live with that.
It's pretty impressive how cliche every scene can be when presenting what should be a new and different concept. The opening scene provides some cartoonish racism that seems to serve no purpose to the story except to demonstrate that rich people can solve every problem with money.
It's just too disappointing.
Serviceable film, but the female lead is pretty unlikeable and unrelateable, even to the point of scoffing at herself when she learns she had decided to become a vegetarian. And she somehow needs proof that she married her husband on purpose? (She's still sceptical even after said proof is provided.) She is constantly undermining her "future self" and yet I'm supposed to believe that all it took is for her to learn that her dad cheated on her mum for a complete character change and again for history to somehow start repeating itself.
It's hard to say how I feel about this film. The pacing is slow and it's at once extravagant and awkward and subtle. I often feel like I'm too old to get the jokes (and I'm not terribly old). At times the film feels like it's trapped in a bottle.
I was quite tempted to give up on it half way. Did I enjoy the film? Kind of. Did I laugh? Occasionally. Was I bored? Sometimes.
I persevered.
It was deep and honest and it moved me in a way few films can.
But I don't know if that was enough.
As much as I'd like to enjoy a Robin Williams performance (where he's still charismatic as usual) but when having to take on the role of an actual child, it isn't very convincing. The writing in general is pretty terrible, particularly for the children.
I won't delve in a general review of the film, but the central theme of the film is its deeper dive into Kenshin's decision not to kill. In this film, we see Kenshin following his "don't kill" philosophy essentially as a member of a government army fighting against Makoto Shishio's rebel army. However, the decision makes less sense the further we get down the rabbit hole.
There's no real exploration of the stakes of this decision -- the fact that millions of lives are at stake, and that Kenshin's choice endangers them all. There's no real exploration of consequences -- that a villain spared can return to commit more villainy. There's definitely no exploration of the moral implications of being a member of an army where -- aside from Kenshin and his friends -- every member of the army is heading into the battle with swords and guns and using lethal force.
At one point, it seemed like they were at least going to delve into the difficulty of defeating an opponent who is willing to kill you when you refuse to kill, but in the end Kenshin just kind of ends up blaming this on his shitty sword, not his philosophy and therefore the problem is solved when he gets a better one. The fact that Kenshin and his colleagues are able to repeatedly and brutally bludgeon their enemies without killing any of them also starts to get very comical -- as it does when you see the remains of a battlefield where Kenshin singlehandedly defeated an army and dozens of defeated are just uselessly writhing in pain. In reality, Kenshin and his friends never seem to be impeded by their decision at all. All it takes is a little bop on the head and someone will writhe in pain for as long as is necessary for the plot to move on.
There is never a rational temptation to commit murder. The only time Kenshin is ever tempted to kill is when someone is making him angry. Additionally, there are multiple occasions where Kenshin does get angry, and makes the decision to kill, but he is stopped only by circumstance. He looks in surprise when it turns out his new sword is also a reverse-blade katana, or when Kaoru shouts "Don't kill!" at the right moment. (Of course, Kaoru also doesn't seem to care at all that Kenshin is literally putting his own life and the lives of other people at risk in order to honour her demand.)
There is a telling scene where Kenshin stops a child from committing murder. He tells the child, "You will please no one by soiling those little hands."
What this film tells us is that it doesn't matter that people die. It doesn't matter that you are part of an army that kills or that your actions directly lead to the deaths of others. It doesn't even matter that you committed attempted murder. In Kenshin's philosophy, it only matters that you are not the one holding the sword that strikes the killing blow. Even this shallow philosophy is never properly explored. Kenshin's hands are already about as dirty as they can get, aren't they? What's the consequence of this? How is he going to clean that blood from his hands?
Funny at times but overall it's a bit disappointing really. It's hard to empathise with the message of a movie that's about how the parents have underestimated the maturity of their children, and need to give them some free reign. Meanwhile, the film keeps undermining this message. For example, at times we see one of these "mature" girls experimenting with drugs without really taking any time to consider what she's putting in her body or why.
In the original animated film, Mulan wants to be normal but she's not very good at it so she feels like an outsider until she finds her place by using her unique talents as a soldier, even though that's socially unacceptable (and illegal) as a woman.
In this remake, Mulan is good at literally everything and born with superpowers, but no one is willing to accept a woman who's competent at anything so she has to struggle with the lie of pretending she's a mere mortal until she decides to stop being ashamed of being the physical embodiment of perfection.
Phenomenal, cosmic powers, and they use them to shoot people. Because shooting people makes the world better, I guess.
The antagonist manages to lead a group of immortals into a trap, and his brilliant plan is to shoot them. Would it be that hard to instead cage them AND THEN shoot them?
Why is it that every mortal in this film reacts to immortality with either complete jealousy or hate. No one says, "Oh my god! You're alive. It's a miracle from god. Praise Jesus or whatever." Instead it's: "I hate you for not dying for some reason. We can't be friends anymore."
The film struggles to stick to its premise, but it tries so hard to make us pity these immortals. Randomly being immortal apparently is really awful. But do you know what's even worse? Randomly not being immortal anymore!
Can you imagine? I'd hate to randomly be immortal. I certainly wouldn't be overjoyed or full of adrenaline for escaping death. It would be very humiliating. Like, gosh. I feel like I would die from the shame of not dying. I'm sure my wife would never forgive me.
I also really have to emphasise that they made some strange and awful music choices.
I expected this to be a somewhat realistic take on what Superman would be like growing up in Soviet Russia instead of the US. However, it's rapidly undermined by Superman's unlikely resistance to state propaganda and the laughable scene where he liberates a Russian gulag just in time for his childhood friend just in time for her to die in his arms. The cliches just keep accumulating.
After hearing all the positive feedback about this film for its accurate portrayal of an outbreak, I was quite curious to check it out. I'm also a fan of Matt Damon.
But it is incredibly boring and it was impossible to stick with it through the first half.
I like to believe that it's possible to make an accurate and entertaining film about a disease outbreak. However, this is not the one.
I was hoping for some dumb fun, but in the end this was a little too dumb.
The first twist (the premise of the film) is that the lead investigator Richard is a corrupt cop/crime lord and every other cop in the team (aside from foreign-exchange cop Liu Jian) is not only equally corrupt but also super-loyal to Richard as he starts killing his own henchmen cops out of rage. In order to hunt down Liu Jian, the corrupt cops shoot machine guns and kill people in broad daylight in front of the hotel's kitchen staff and laundry workers, creating so many witnesses that it defies belief. This because Richard decided to frame Liu Jian for the murder of a criminal (it's not clear why Richard needs a fall guy anyway) and Jian had the nerve to run away instead of letting himself get shot. So Richard first deliberately creates a witness then instead of letting said witness escape he creates several dozen witnesses who are presumably silenced off-screen and also presumably needs to explain to his superiors how the hotel ended up riddled with bullet-holes while two of his henchmen blew up in the laundry chute.
The action scenes and the performances are competent, so technically it's fine. It would almost be worth a watch as mindless entertainment, but it keeps reminding you how poorly it's written, and the sidekick Jessica is among the more useless and annoying of action movie sidekicks.
A power fantasy and a case study in (almost) everything wrong with police culture.
The directing is very cheesy and generally it's just a bit boring.
The fights have so many cuts that they're unwatchable, it's not possible to follow the action and it literally makes me feel ill.
It's basically a superhero movie about a couple of guys who spontaneously decide they want to kill all of the mob bosses and turn about to be somehow superhumanly competent while also being dumbasses.
Some moments are funny stupid, other moments are awkwardly stupid, but the stupidity never stops.
A whole lot of people shooting each other and dying to save the kid of some douchebag who's important for some reason, I guess.
The action is nice, but it struggles to give you someone to root for.
The main point of this movie is the spectacle of the dancing, but they edit the dancing o badly and you can't see any of it.
Of course, don't expect the story to make up for that.
For me, it did not live up to expectations.
It's a movie full of sociopaths. The protagonists most of all. Also, they are oddly confident and competent as scam artists to the point it makes me wonder why they were never able to scam their way into another job before.
The opening sequence is kind of hilarious. A giant terrifying mecha aggressively reassuring the civilians that they're safe. They couldn't try to make it a little more convincing?
And later he jumps over a wall to escape from a Chinese electronics factory and lands directly in a rice paddy surrounded by Chinese farmers wearing conical hats.
Everything in this film is a stereotype. Every element is as bland as generic and predictable as it possibly could be.
This is one of the worst examples of Hollywood retelling a classical hero story.
First they feel the need to make it more "realistic" by removing anything supernatural from the story, but then the action is so absurd and over-the-top that this only makes it less believable.
Worse. They constantly tease the supernatural as a fake out as if they're mocking your intelligence.
In an era of superhero films, post Lord of the Rings, why do these directors feel they have to make a story "realistic" in order for us to take it seriously?
Setting that all aside, the characters are as cartoonish as they can get, and this is a boring story that bares practically no connection to the stories Hercules is known for.
Mediocre military porn. American soldiers massacring Iraqi soldiers without at any point recognising the Iraqis as anything more than cannon fodder.
And eventually I was turned off by the idea that Captain Walden should be given the medal of honor after pointing a gun at her own soldier, leading to the Mexican stand-off that got her wounded. Yes, she later "sacrificed herself" so that her soldiers could evacuate first, but there was absolutely no time spent showing that this was in any way necessary for the evacuation.
Also, don't watch this movie because of Matt Damon. He's wasted in this film.
Bland, predictable, but there are worse ways to waste your time. That said, the romance in the film is the opposite of cute.
Tired of having dull conversations? Watch this film with a friend, and if you can endure it to the end you'll have plenty to talk about as you vent at each other and try to make sense of the rubbish you've subjected yourselves to.
What the hell is this film?
Imagine a film where the first act starts off like a creepy version of Bicentennial Man.
And then the mid-section is like zany, action-heavy version of Blade Runner.
And the ending is the cheesy and fairy-tale mutated offspring of the ending from Interstellar.
Do you like feeling awkward and uncomfortable? Do you want to watch a highly intelligent robot (who should know better) standing around and being creepy? Do you want to watch his family treat him poorly in creepy ways while the robot continues to do creepy things? Then you'll be enjoying yourself for the first act.
Do you like watching robots getting framed for murder, getting hunted and blown up in a sexy PG Cyberpunk world? Then the second act is for you!
Is the story so far off-the-rails that only random aliens can make it worse? Absolutely!
Overall, it is an entertaining film, well made and with solid themes. Definitely not a waste of time, but overall the drama was a little weak and it was hard to feel an investment in the journey.
This is an okay movie to watch one time. The characters are fine, but the villains are a waste of time and the story feels hollow.
Turn off your brain. See if you can enjoy the spectacle and the absurd premise.
The characters are bland, the story is by the numbers and silly things happen just to serve the plot (eg Lincoln gets superpowers in literally 30 seconds just because his teacher asks him to get angry at a tree).
I want to look at the silliness and blandness as a joke forming part of the parody of Abraham Lincoln, but the joke doesn't land and instead it all just seems like laziness.
