Movie Review

After the dinner with the friends with the Best Turkey in the World on Saturday, my wife and I dropped the kids off with one of her friends for some sitting, and then went and saw the Movie 'Skyline'.

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rtqUy34Tjk

Enjoy the trailer?  Get you all kinds of excited?  Me too.  Which requires a disclaimer on my part.  You see, I am a movie trailer and spoiler junkie.  Can't get enough...I love the website www.io9.com for it's fairly constant barrage of sci-fi related previews.  You might think this would make me hard to please/surprise when it comes to the movies themselves, but really I am usually not hard to please.

In the case of 'Skyline' it had been on my radar for somewhere in the 6-8 month range as a 'Want to Pay to See This in the Theater' movie. This put it somewhere in between 'Cloverfield' and 'Transformers' on my Anticipation Meter.   Unlike the other two movies, it didn't measure up.  Some spoilers ahead if you are the type to care about that...













Movie starts out good and fast...bunch of attractive 20-somethings are hanging out in LA, recovering from a party, when an overpowering blue light appears and folks start disappearing.  We soon discover it's aliens...and the aliens look pretty neat.   The alien threat is not the weak part of this movie...they are quite menacing and come in a enough shapes and sizes to represent a threat at all times.

First major hurdle of the movie is the 20-somethings trying to decide if they are going to hole up or if they are gonna make a break for it, heading for their boat at the marina.  They decide to make a break for it, and several minutes of chaos and panic ensue, some it quite thrilling, but when things settle down again, you realize the films critical flaw:

You don't give a Rats Ass what happens to any of these folks.  A few quick attempts are made to get you to care about the characters:  You find out without much mystery that one of them is pregnant, and then later that one of them is cheating on his significant other...I guess this is supposed to create instant empathy...but no.  I don't think it was the actors faults:  I didn't recognize most of the cast, but two of them I did...Donald Faison, who plays Turk on Scrubs, and Brittany Daniels, one of the Sweet Valley High twins(looking every bit her 34 years).

More hiding in the apartment, followed by an appearance by the US Military, bringing hope, followed by another chase/chaos scene, and we're done...with a very cop-out type ending.  If you want to let the aliens win, just let the aliens win!  Don't let them win, and try to offer a little twist at the end.

Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie a 14%...I think it's better than that.  If you don't have a top of the line TV at home, the aliens might be good enough to justify seeing a matinee in the theater...but if you do have a nice TV, just wait to see it on REDBOX and you will get your monies worth.   SWMBO, who was looking forward to it almost as much as me, described it as 'a missed opportunity'.