Battleship 2012

Steven Snyder, TIME Magazine: More fun than a board game blockbuster has any right to be Read more

Soren Anderson, Seattle Times: Turn off your brain and enjoy. But don't forget to cover your ears. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: ... a big, bold blast so swaggeringly expressed and self-knowingly built that it wins you over with its sheer bravado. Read more

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times: [It] has a plot as unambitious as a macaroni dinner, familiar and easy to eat and not particularly nutritious. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Battleship is dopey, preposterous and unintentionally hilarious in all the wrong places, but as directed by Peter Berg, it is also energetic, fast-moving and bracing. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Like "Transformers," which it rivals in relentlessness, "Battleship" comes with its own force field, a furious energy that renders criticism irrelevant. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: The Marines got that commercial where the recruit slays the fire-spewing lava monster, and now the Navy has its two-hour propaganda film about the glories of fighting alien invaders positioned in neat little quadrants at sea. Just try to forget it's a toy Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: When did Peter Berg become Michael Bay's smarter brother? Read more

Tom Russo, Boston Globe: Hey, if you're Hasbro and Universal, and you've agreed to make a movie based on nothing more than brand recognition of a game, you've got to fill two hours with something. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: Once the special effects take over, Berg has little room to assert his personality (or tell a story, for that matter), and the movie feels like a chore. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: If the movie is anything like the game, I say stay at home and read a good book (or graphic novel). Or listen to an audiobook - In short, do anything else. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: "Battleship" doesn't sink, really. It just sits there booming endlessly as you look on aghast. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Surrounding the alien rumpus, the filmmakers have built an unexpectedly sincere salute to the awesome responsibilities of today's U.S. Navy as well as to the heroic work of veterans who came before. Read more

Megan Lehmann, Hollywood Reporter: Impressive visual effects and Berg's epic set pieces fight against an armada of cinematic cliches and some truly awful dialogue. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Something of an earnest, two-hour infomercial that should do wonders for naval recruiting if not civilian entertainment. Read more

Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News: Not all of "Battleship" works. But even when you're laughing at it -- not with it -- the blockbuster remains silly fun, leaks and all. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: At one point, a hot chick in a Jeep saves the world by ramming her car into an alien thingamajig. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: "Battleship" employs the same nonintelligent strategy as the Hasbro board game: Fire blindly at broad targets and wait for explosions. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: As big, dumb summer movies go ... this is just another big, dumb summer movie. And one that makes you feel slightly dumber for having watched it. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: Well, it has aliens, for one thing. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: "Battleship" is the worst humans-fighting-aliens movie I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of humans-fighting-aliens movies. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: It makes "Top Gun" look like the work of Orson Welles. At least the Tom Cruise movie remembered to cast actual actors. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Battleship has the IQ of a rutabaga and doesn't require much more intelligence than that to watch. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Big loud stupid dopey shameless cliched overbearing and did I mention stupid? Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The film eventually comes down to lots of scenes in which things get blowed up real good. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Battleship is all noise and crashing metal, sinking to the shallows of Michael Bay's Armageddon and then digging to the brain-extinction level of the Transformers trilogy. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Berg has definitely spent his reported $200 million budget on stuff you can see. It's just all so profoundly stupid. Read more

Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle: It's loud, it's large, it's stupid, and its best gag involves a chicken burrito. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: This is the kind of summer movie that softens your brain tissue without even providing the endocrine burst of pleasure that would make it all worthwhile. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: "Battleship" is big, dumb fun that knows it's big, dumb fun and enthusiastically embraces its big, dumb, fun nature. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film boasts a destroyer's wallop of visual effects, but not enough brains to fill a dinghy. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Some guilty-pleasure cheese atop a ration of stale popcorn can't cleanse the distastefulness that "Battleship" leaves in its wake. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: Battleship is substantially less awful than it could have been. And for me, that may have been the biggest disappointment of all. Read more

Adam Litovitz, Globe and Mail: One can be sure that heroic characters get what they want, bond with enemies, and earn respect. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: I was never bored. And that, sadly, makes it better than most of the other expensive and over-hyped films of its ilk. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Battleship, a commercial for, alternately, the military or Michael Bay's back catalog, feels sunken from an overdose of charmless grunting and computer-generated ballast. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The loudest, dumbest alien-invasion movie based on a board game since, well, ever. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Mostly, Battleship is a noisy, overlong and numbing military-vs.-aliens saga with laughably bad dialogue. Read more

Guy Lodge, Variety: Overlong and underwritten even by the standards of summer f/x extravaganzas, this Battleship will nonetheless float with many on the strength of its boyish, eager-to-please razzle-dazzle. Read more

Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice: When the F-14s came out for a triumphant flyover, I looked around the room to find the moron who was applauding only to realize that it was me. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: "Battleship" is an invigorating blast of cinematic adrenaline. Read more