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Ratings17
aircodh9's rating
Reviews14
aircodh9's rating
A massive problem with this film, is that the two main actors (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) are for much of the time, unintelligible. Their dialogue is either at too low a level, not spoken clearly enough, or shrieked at such a speed and volume that you don't know whether to turn the volume up, down or off. This is so bad at times that you literally can't understand a word they are saying.
What makes this even worse is that they are supposed to be the children of screen legend Keith David, who in every film he's ever made, is perfectly understandable, so as a casting choice his children should at least have similarly comprehendable accents. Instead we have Palmer with her over the top 'Hell no girlfriend!' style shrieking, and Kaluuya with his mumbled muted tones. This in istelf is a problem in terms of listening to it at one specific volume whilst having even the slightest chance of comprehending what they are saying in an attempt to follow the story, but even if that were possible, the idea that these three actors are supposed to be from the same planet, let alone the same family, with such radically different vocal performances, is laughable.
Whilst all this is bad enough to make you give up attempting to follow the storline even if you could, when it's coupled with night scenes which for most of the time are so badly lit/exposed that the screen might as well be complely black, it's pretty much a no brainer to stop watching the thing.
This is a real shame, because the premise looked like it might have been a half-decent story and something different. Sadly, most people will never know if that is true because the thing is just unwatchable.
What makes this even worse is that they are supposed to be the children of screen legend Keith David, who in every film he's ever made, is perfectly understandable, so as a casting choice his children should at least have similarly comprehendable accents. Instead we have Palmer with her over the top 'Hell no girlfriend!' style shrieking, and Kaluuya with his mumbled muted tones. This in istelf is a problem in terms of listening to it at one specific volume whilst having even the slightest chance of comprehending what they are saying in an attempt to follow the story, but even if that were possible, the idea that these three actors are supposed to be from the same planet, let alone the same family, with such radically different vocal performances, is laughable.
Whilst all this is bad enough to make you give up attempting to follow the storline even if you could, when it's coupled with night scenes which for most of the time are so badly lit/exposed that the screen might as well be complely black, it's pretty much a no brainer to stop watching the thing.
This is a real shame, because the premise looked like it might have been a half-decent story and something different. Sadly, most people will never know if that is true because the thing is just unwatchable.
Damn, this one is bad. Like many sci fi movies, the story is a hackneyed mess of cliches we've all seen before, but we kind of expect that and this in itself would be tolerable if it had been done with some panache or a stab at creativity. Unfortunately, it isn't.
We open with a tell don't show preamble designed to cut to the CGI as soon as possible: Earth is knackered, we have to find a new home, but as luck would have it we've found some ancient alien technology last week which allows us to do that, so we're off to space to make a new home for humanity...
From this point it is apparent that whilst the thing has some decent CGI as we set off for the new planet in our shiny cool looking spaceship, it also becomes glaringly obvious that somebody forgot to load the script, acting , direction and lighting onto the spaceship. Thus we have everything on board necessary for a really bad film:
Female character who fails the Bechdel Test: Check!
Cast of unlikeable male characters who would never be selected for a space mission in a million years: Check!
Dark sets and bad lighting intended to make things look dramatic but which only serve to make it confusing to follow what's going on: Check!
Poor decisions from a crew who come across as being incapable of completing a food order in McDonalds without arsing it up, let alone operating a spaceship on a mission to save humanity: Check!
Dialogue which would be considered bad even for a Scooby Doo cartoon: Check!
Science story which has more hand waving than a sign language convention: Check!
Dubbed English voices with all the acting chops of a 1970s porn movie: Check!
It really is that bad. As noted, the CGI is good and the actual visual matching of the dubbing to the on-screen lip movements is very well done, even if the acting itself is poor, but these are literally the only good points.
If these characters are supposed to be the best of the best in Earth's attempt to save the human race, then that extinction-level meteorite can't hit our planet soon enough.
We open with a tell don't show preamble designed to cut to the CGI as soon as possible: Earth is knackered, we have to find a new home, but as luck would have it we've found some ancient alien technology last week which allows us to do that, so we're off to space to make a new home for humanity...
From this point it is apparent that whilst the thing has some decent CGI as we set off for the new planet in our shiny cool looking spaceship, it also becomes glaringly obvious that somebody forgot to load the script, acting , direction and lighting onto the spaceship. Thus we have everything on board necessary for a really bad film:
Female character who fails the Bechdel Test: Check!
Cast of unlikeable male characters who would never be selected for a space mission in a million years: Check!
Dark sets and bad lighting intended to make things look dramatic but which only serve to make it confusing to follow what's going on: Check!
Poor decisions from a crew who come across as being incapable of completing a food order in McDonalds without arsing it up, let alone operating a spaceship on a mission to save humanity: Check!
Dialogue which would be considered bad even for a Scooby Doo cartoon: Check!
Science story which has more hand waving than a sign language convention: Check!
Dubbed English voices with all the acting chops of a 1970s porn movie: Check!
It really is that bad. As noted, the CGI is good and the actual visual matching of the dubbing to the on-screen lip movements is very well done, even if the acting itself is poor, but these are literally the only good points.
If these characters are supposed to be the best of the best in Earth's attempt to save the human race, then that extinction-level meteorite can't hit our planet soon enough.