When I first heard of the premise of Battleship, I assumed that its director Peter Berg, creator of TV’s Friday Night Lights, and writers Erich and Jon Hoeber were high on something other than life. Anyway you look at it, greenlighting a $200-plus million production inspired very loosely — so they say — by Hasbro’s classic pegs-and-grid game isn’t the wisest decision. I assume, however, that Universal Pictures was egged on by the wild success of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which was conjured out of a Disney theme park attraction, and the Tomb Raider franchise, the first of which is still the highest-grossing film adaptation of a video game ever released in United States.
It’s no surprise that Battleship only raked in about $25.5 million in its debut weekend, outgunned by the record-breaking The Avengers. “No sane person would have mistaken Battleship for high art,” writes Time’s Nate Rawlings. Still, even if the Transformers-like naval combat flick doesn’t make any bones about being a check-your-brain-at-the-door summer blockbuster, it’s never a good sign when more than one non-actor is employed to, well, non-act. Swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker aside, it’s Rihanna (in an uncommonly flattering Navy uniform) that steals the show. The Bajan pop star may only have a minor role, but she delivers her one-liners with such sass and determination that her performance — “Look dapper!”, “Mahalo, motherfu…! “ — becomes unintentionally camp and funny. Taylor Kitsch is here, too, providing someone on-screen to hate as Lt. Alex Hopper and trying to put the potentially career-ending flop that was John Carter squarely behind him. As Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak put it, 2012 was “the year that Hollywood took a chance on Taylor Kitsch and failed miserably.”
Board Game To Big Screen
Despite Battleship’s lackluster box office receipts, the board game-to-big screen trend seems to be picking up. As Yahoo!’s Ashley Hargrove reports, “Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures are working with Hasbro to bring forth a remake” of Risk, Universal and Hasbro are back in business on Ouija, and an update of the 1985 movie Clue is being planned, to be produced and directed by Pirates of the Caribbean’s Gore Verbinski. This sort of laziness is everything that’s wrong with commercial filmmaking, but it’s also what makes it a lot of mindless fun.
Lionsgate’s What To Expect When You’re Expecting is yet another example of attempting to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The popular pregnancy guide does not contain a storyline, yet writers Shauna Cross, Heather Hach and original author Heidi Murkoff were able to fashion an almost-two-hour rom com out of very flimsy material. That doesn’t mean it’s any good, though: It only has a 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and E! Online’s Matt Steven’s called it an “ill-conceived childbirth comedy.” You don’t need to sit through a star-laden feature to know that having kids is — gasp — a messy and complicated process.
Sheer Bravado
I wouldn’t be surprised if, after this year’s What To Expect and Think Like A Man and 2009’s He’s Just Not That Into You, the mainstream movie industry takes on more advice-book adaptations. Since I’m partial to grammar and its attendant rules, why not rework Lynn Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves with Imelda Staunton, Judi Dench and Colin Firth as the resident grammar bullies? At the rate we’re going, I wouldn’t be shocked if someone crafted a script out of an iPad instruction manual.
After all, it seems that anything can be turned into a trope. Star Cinema’s First Day High, for instance, starring Geoff Eigenmann, Jason Abalos, Maja Salvador, Gerald Anderson and Kim Chiu, was contrived out of — brace yourselves — a deodorant commercial. The 2006 gem gets points for sheer bravado, but it does underscore a vital point: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
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