“Is this a super secret surprise Navy exercise? ‘Cuz if so, they’ve gone way to far.”

Justin’s rating: It’s like someone went, “Pearl Harbor was interesting and all, but it needed more extra-terrestrials. Also, Transformers.” That person was probably on heavy medication.

Justin’s review: I know that Hollywood is hard-up for inspiring IPs, but there’s desperation and then there’s a script writer frantically pawing through his kid’s game closet for an idea. Let’s face it: Battleship the game is not the greatest trove of lore there is. At best, it’s a lackluster past-time that’s given us an enduring catch phrase. Trying to twist and mold this into a film is such a bizarre premise that it got me to show up out of sheer curiosity.

And then I stayed, because they kind of made something watchable out of it. Not a masterpiece, mind you, but not quite the disaster this by all rights should be.

First, a quandary. If you want to create a movie about battleships duking it out and not set it during World War II (the last time that this sort of thing happened with any regularity), what do you do? The only two countries in the world that have battleships right now are the US and Japan*, and no studio marketing film is going to be like, “Yay! Let’s pit two allies against each other to generate massive amounts of bad publicity!” Thus, the solution they struck on, believe it or not, was…

and I’m not making this up

…battleships vs. alien spaceships. Spaceships that, for some reason, kind of like the water a lot. That worked out nicely, and nobody’s going to complain that we’re beating up some fictitious E.T.s instead of, say, Norway.

And why are aliens wading in our pool? Because we sent a radio transmission essentially inviting them to Independence Day us. So that’s our bad.

The premise isn’t the only thing that feels like a throwback to ’90s scifi actioneers. Battleship takes all of its style straight from the Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich school of over-the-top bravado. You know the drill. Lots of quick, exaggerated cuts, loud music, slow-motion, and every scene is ratcheted up to 11, even if it’s a news conference or a soccer match. My advice is to take a couple Tylenol preemptively and surrender yourself to the noise-and-light show that ensues.

As Navy screwup Alex and his big brother Stone sail out to war games in the Pacific under the command of Admiral Liam “I never say no to any role” Neeson, the aliens crash land and the US and Japan throw their battleships into action one last time. Also, Rihanna is there to make me constantly wonder if she got on the wrong tour bus and ended up on a destroyer but was to embarrassed to say so.

The biggest miscalculation, other than not making a movie out of Twister**, is putting a selfish, impulsive lunkhead at the forefront of this story. I get it, this is a prove-yourself-redemption-arc, but there’s such a thing as making your hero too unlikable to be a hero. And as none of these characters seem like actual sailors, it feels more like mix-and-match cosplay night at Comic Con.

Cue lots of destruction porn, big cannons going boom, and ships being the true action heroes. I mean… it’s not the worst idea? It’s probably going to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Hollywood to throw major bucks at a spaceships vs. battleships blockbuster, so eat it up, silliness and all, because this isn’t happening again.

A big part of the fun is watching the screenwriters twisting themselves into knots to make this bizarre setup work. For example, how do you keep this a primarily naval exercise? Why, the aliens throw a huge force field around the area to isolate Hawaii so that everyone inside the bubble — aliens included — have to stay there. How does earth stand a chance fighting vastly superior alien tech? By playing Battleship on radar. With grids and pings and serious actors calling out “E-11!”

Oh, and they somehow recommission the USS Missouri from a museum piece to a combat vessel with the help of World War II vets in the span of a “Thunderstruck” montage. Why not?

Battleship is too long and full of rehashed beats from familiar scifi movies and even video games (the aliens look like Halo guys, which has to be no coincidence), and if you hate on it, I will not fault you. Yet the Rule of Cool is the law of this movie, and as long as you don’t engage logic, observation, or common sense, you should be fine.

*Seriously, I looked it up. The Ottoman Empire used to have some, but they’re going through a rough patch here in the 21st century.

**The mat-and-spinny dial game, not anything to do about tornadoes.

Intermission!

• Not used to seeing a giant Hasbro logo before movies
• This is the most exciting music ever used for a scientific press conference
• Don’t waste a wish on a girl
• “Johnny, chicken burrito her.”
• That’s a lot of collateral damage for a burrito
• “He’s getting back up!”
• It’s Perd from Parks and Recreation as yet another newscaster!
• OK that’s a bad kick
• Shades off when you’re in military formation
• This is what we call the Jerry Lewis defense
• I’m glad this movie subtitles the ships because there’s no way I’m keeping any of this straight
• Cell phones work great when you’re at sea
• “I’m not saying you’re a boob, but this is boobish behavior.”
• I swear, every big budget movie has to include some scene in China to sell it there
• Oh don’t start singing, Rihanna
• Those angry roller balls are insane but I kind of love them
• Those are some bristly alien beards
• “Like ‘we’re gonna need a new planet’ bad feeling.”
• How fortuitous for the audience that the aliens color-code all dangerous things red and safe things green
• Using a turret cannon to kill a single alien seems like overkill
• “IS HE A CYBORG?”
• And if you asked if there was a scene where they blind-fired at spots on a grid while calling out “E-11,” yes there was.
• Yeah let’s enlist the super-old geezers and have them walk in slow-motion to save the day. That’s my favorite part of the entire film.
• The alien’s main ship-busting weapons look like the pegs from Battleship
• Soldiers can carry a 1,000-pound shell by hand