Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Now Playing: Pacific Rim

Have to admit: I was pretty excited about Pacific Rim.  Not only did it have Guillermo del Toro at the helm (whose work in Pan's Labyrinth and El Orfanato was pretty stellar), but it also involved giants robots and Idris Elba!  It's like the perfect setup for a decent popcorn-muncher.

So, let's cover the good stuff: the special effects were great.  Very believable, excellent physics integration, not cheesy at all.  For both Robot and Kaiju.  Also, love the bringing back of the term "kaiju", which I haven't heard in some time and I think is the perfect shorthand for this sort of monster.  Cloverfield should have referenced it, but didn't (then, that movie wasn't very good).  Also, also: kinda loved the interaction between the two scientists ...and, that's about it.

Frankly, the movie had too many issues.

First, the cast members really looked alike.  I mean, don't they  have brunet(te)s that can kick ass?  They even bottle-blonded the two huge (and obviously dark-haired) Russians.  It was ridiculous.

And then there's the running time: 132 minutes.  That's really long for an action flick.  Fast-paced movies need to keep up a good clip so you don't mired in details (why didn't they detonate nukes on these creatures? why did they think a WALL would stop them? wait, what's that about dinosaurs?)  Somewhere along the line, I got a little, well, bored.

Finally, if they wanted us to care about the characters, they needed to give us more time to identify with them.  The only one that I would have been sad to lose was Miss Mori, but most of that was due to the totally adorable Mana Ashida, with her blue coat and little red shoe.  the rest?  Expendable. 

So, what to rate this?  Well, I wouldn't recommend watching it in theatres (waste of money) and I think watching it at home would actually detract from the movie's best parts: the special effects.  That alone is a 50% fail.  But coupled with its inability to live up to its own hype and for giving away all the best lines in the trailer: 2 out of 5 stars.

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