Battleship

(M) Universal DVD/BD/Digital Download

Seriously, what can you say about a film that is based on a board game and stars this year’s most overrated actor, Taylor Kitsch?

My advice: make a bowl of popcorn, make sure your expectations are so low that you may find watching paint dry entertaining, press play and make sure you regularly mock the screen.

Yes, this makes a Transformer movie look like a work of Shakespeare.

If you need some idea about story, there is one, just.

During the RIMPAC International naval war games there is an encounter with aliens that have landed on earth to take over our communications satellites so that they can bring the rest of their armada to take over the planet.

There are many plot holes. First and foremost would be why a superior alien race with superior technology would need our technology to phone home (this is actually mentioned in the sloppy script).

Secondly, five ships came through space to land in the water outside Pearl Harbour, so the rest of earth can breathe a sigh of relief because, if we ever were visited by aliens, the Americans are clearly the first target.

There are a couple of visual gags that allude to the Hasbro board game of the same name and director Peter Berg makes a cameo in the film but, overall, this is a film so inane and stupid one would wonder why a studio would greenlight such rubbish.

Rihanna stars in her first acting role alongside the charmless Kitsch and she brings some welcome lady brawn to the proceedings, although she barely has three sentences in the film.

Elsewhere, thankless roles go to Liam Neeson and Alexander Skarsgard, who work to make a meal of their cardboard cut-out roles.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the stupidity was firing up the decommissioned “Mighty Mo”, The USS Missouri, against the aliens. The WWII war ship is all that is left to fight against the superior firepower of the aliens.

Adrian Drayton