Since I seem to do nothing but watch movies any more now that I’m waiting to burn off the rest of my 85 hours of flight time, I figured I’d make something useful from it. Here goes.
King Arthur: imagine Braveheart meets The Patriot meets Gladiator, but without the best elements of any of them. This movie tries too hard to be all three, and not only manages to fail (perhaps unsurprisingly), but also nearly completely wastes Keira Knightley in her role as Guinevere, who wasn’t even introduced until halfway through the film and miraculously transforms from near-dead waif to ass-kicking grrrl in what seems like the space of a few days. I say “almost,” because the final battle scene with her little leather bikini top thing is as close as it gets to titillating. Out of five stars, this one gets two.
I, Robot: I have a confession to make. I really like Will Smith as an actor. Not so much that I would ever apologise for the abomination that was Wild Wild West, but I really enjoyed Independence Day, which bears some similarity to this surprisingly good piece of film, except the aliens are robots bent on taking over humanity. Shades of The Matrix trilogy abound, but this time, Neo is black and far more believable in his role. The movie didn’t really grab me and say, “You must see me again,” though, so this one gets three out of five stars.
Dodgeball: I have four words for you. “Christine Taylor in leather.” The Lance Armstrong cameo is hilarious, and Ben Stiller plays a wonderful sleazy fitness centre owner. Chuck Norris and William Shatner also have entertaining cameos in this one, which was fairly fast-paced and kept the laughs coming. This is definitely a movie that gets funnier the more you watch it, and will probably be the most-quoted movie of 2004 among the college crowd. Four out of five stars.
The important question - did you stay through the end of the credits at Dodgeball?
…as one of my friends described the experience “The most wrong thing in the history of all things wrong.”
Sadly, I did not. I’ve been told by several people now that I should have.
Hopefully they’ll put it on the DVD, which I will definitely be buying.
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