"Battleship" sinks like a frozen turkey

In the May 25, 2012 issue of Entertainment Weekly (EW) , the number one on the "Must List" is the movie Battleship. EW called it a "surprisingly complex action movie." (Page 9) I wrote that Battleship was dumb and gave it a grade of D. It was so bad that I compiled a list of the dumb moments in the movie. I called it one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen. Yet, Lisa Schwarzbaum of EW gave it a B+. By the way, she's an excellent critic. But I'm guessing that everybody at EW was stoned when they saw it. I kid. I kid.

The reason why I'm right and EW is wrong is this admission. According to this Yahoo article, Comcast chairman Brian Roberts said that Battleship was an "unfortunate, large miss." Comcast owns a controlling interest in studio Universal which produced Battleship. The article notes that Battleship cost more than 200 million to make and market. It's domestic take is a woeful 50 million. It did take in about 233 million abroad. But that's probably not going to make a profit for Battleship.

So what sunk Battleship? It was doomed from the beginning. Start with a really dumb idea for a movie. It's based on a board game about deduction with no characters. Then make it dumber by adding dumb aliens. Make them comic looking. Make them look like Lizard Amish. Mix in dumb humans and action. Voila. The dumbest movie made this year or any year. Amazingly, 34 % of the critics at Rotten Tomatoes approved. Still, that's bad enough for a Rotten rating. Mark Battleship as the odds on favorite to win the Razzie for Worst Picture.