Battleship; or: Battleshit

The nice girl at the cable company seems to have given us free premium channels after we complained about the price of our (basic) cable. Lord knows we'd never pay for those things... Thanks, nice cable girl!

On the down side, this brought it about that I watched Battleship last night.

Which brought to mind the question: how does one make a movie that bad? Don't they, like, pay people to keep an eye on things as they're making them? Out of a zillion dollar budget, is nobody paid to actually watch what they're generating? Does nobody have the authority to hit the panic button and inform them that they're making a big pile of crap?

Cool special effects...and if the story etc. are merely bad, that's often enough for me. But, jeez...not enough in this case. It was like they just threw in every cliche and hackneyed bit of business that they'd ever heard of, one right after the other. Seriously, two minutes in--and in the mood for mindlessness and big special effects, no less--I said "wow, this is terrible." JQ tuned out and surfed the web. How can a movie suck that fast?

Ok, I'm going to give 'em points for figuring out a really surprisingly non-stupid way to work the pegs from the game into the story. Honestly, that was pretty impressive. Yes, it evoked a derisive laugh...but it was way less stupid than it had any right to be. I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't think they'd have the 'nads to try to work in the alphanumeric grid business...but they actually did amazingly well on that score as well. Having pulled that off, and given the well above-average special effects, that could have been a decent flick if the story hadn't stunk on ice.

But it did, and I'm giving Battleship...oh...one...raptor claw...or something...out of...oh, let's say four. Or five maybe.