“Battleship” squared away, transcends expectations

Battleship is probably the most agreeable steaming pile of crap I’ll enjoy all summer.

A by-the-numbers Us Versus Aliens shoot-’em-up, with more than a passing debt to Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise, Battleship (looooosely based on the vintage board game of the same name) surpasses its pedigree in the grace notes.

The movie’s relationship to its ‘source material’ is tenuous at best—laughable on its face—even though the filmmakers do manage to slip in a neat vertical grid search at one point. I’d wager there’s a version of this game out there now with batteries and aliens and spinny metal dervishes that eat warships and the whole deal, but they might as well have called this movie Life because all the characters start out alive, or Clue because that’s what our hero doesn’t have one of at the beginning, etc.

After a little too much blablabla, evil, would-be conqueror aliens interrupt a joint war games practice between the American and Japanese fleets off of Hawaii and summer movie wackiness ensues.

The tall, blonde vampire fellow from True Blood shows up, as does the actor who played John Carter in Disney’s ill-fated tentpole effort of the same name. Liam Neeson phones in a couple of scenes at the beginning and the end. For this he passed on Speilberg’s Lincoln?

I understand another one of the roles is filled by pop harlot Rihanna, but as none of the actresses were required to do any nude scenes, I did not recognize her. She was probably the improbably short, sassy Navy grunt with the to-die-for non-military coif.

The movie’s real casting coup though, is real-life double-amputee Gregory D. Gadson in a major supporting role, as well as what looked to me like actual surviving World War Two veterans, of both the American and Japanese fleets (ostensibly gathered for the war games staged for the film).

Many other actual wounded American vets show up early in the film as background players for the scenes with the hero’s impossibly hot physical therapist girlfriend, and the matter-of-fact manner in which they carry on in the face of their often unspeakable injuries says more about their courage than the most overwrought subplot could have.

Kudos to the summer blockbuster filmmakers for exercising restraint!

Including these actual veterans in the storyline—as well as tailoring the non-CGI elements of the plot to emphasize themes of forgiveness and healing without coming off condescending or glad-handing—elevates the film above its board game provenance.

What no doubt started off as a series of crass, calculated decisions designed to sell the film in as many foreign/specialty markets as possible, ends up playing onscreen as corny as a Norman Rockwell painting of rosy-cheeked carollers on a snowy Christmas day.

My God, even the obligatory dirty hippie gets a moment of redemption.

And for the geezer demographic, along with their History Channel-loving boomer offspring, a revered World War II-era relic is dusted off and taken out for one final moment of earth-saving glory to cap off a long and illustrious maritime career.

Oh yeah, and as soon as the good guys figure out the aliens’ Achilles Heel—ya knew they had to have one—them danged ugly ETs blow up real good, too. (I don’t think that really qualifies as a spoiler in a movie whose first ‘brought to you by’ onscreen credit is toymaker Hasbro.)

But the heart of the movie isn’t in its bombs bursting or cities blowing up, or spaceships burping out malevolent metal progeny, it’s in the margins. It’s in the unselfconscious nod to old-fashioned patriotism, without ignoring its real-world ramifications, both past and present. It’s including actors who due to age or physical disability probably don’t get a lot of work, and not throwing a self-congratulatory klieg-light on the fact.

Battleship is that rare instance of all the little moments between the big ones adding to the richness of the total experience, not just the film’s run time.

For an enterprise conceived and built specifically to fill movie theater seats and lighten wallets, Battleship does a surprisingly good job of lifting the spirit, too.