This movie didn't start out too bad, we get straight to Lucy Lawless in her underwear. Hey, can't beat that. Actually, Lawless is quite a good actress, something I never would have known from watching Zena. One of the more enjoyable parts about this movie was her relationship with her boyfriend. But that's not good when we're supposed to be enjoying the locusts.
After the first hour, the movie really loses its way. The writers seem more interested in bashing on the military than continuing the story they began in the first half. Basically, the "good" characters don't have a clue what to do, but they're more than happy to criticize the plan the military comes up with. A very dangerous plan indeed, but the military isn't given the opportunity of coming up with laughably absurd ideas and then having them work. Only Lawless and her boyfriend are allowed that option. Probably the dumbest scene in the whole movie is when they're in the helicopter and Lawless starts trying to kill everybody. Um, I think they would have probably had her locked up for the rest of the movie, but they act like nothing happened! That's the type of stuff that really distinguishes writers from hacks.
Then of course there's the scene in the barn. I mean, c'mon, even movies with 1/10th the budget of this thing don't take such liberties with common sense. If you want to electrify the exterior of a barn and two silos, you just hook up a generator to it? Oh, yeah. We are dumb aren't we? The problem was that the writers were so carried away with harping on the military for coming up with a solution that was extremely dangerous that they had to come up with some way of killing all the locusts in a completely safe way in order to draw a contrast between good and bad, but they just didn't have a clue how to do it in a way that anyone over the age of 9 wouldn't laugh at. Actually my 9 year old was laughing. Maybe the writers should have skipped the whole thing about demonizing the military, because they didn't have any better solution themselves? Nah, that would require maturity.
I give it 4 stars based solely on the performance of Lucy Lawless, which was really the only thing good about this.
After the first hour, the movie really loses its way. The writers seem more interested in bashing on the military than continuing the story they began in the first half. Basically, the "good" characters don't have a clue what to do, but they're more than happy to criticize the plan the military comes up with. A very dangerous plan indeed, but the military isn't given the opportunity of coming up with laughably absurd ideas and then having them work. Only Lawless and her boyfriend are allowed that option. Probably the dumbest scene in the whole movie is when they're in the helicopter and Lawless starts trying to kill everybody. Um, I think they would have probably had her locked up for the rest of the movie, but they act like nothing happened! That's the type of stuff that really distinguishes writers from hacks.
Then of course there's the scene in the barn. I mean, c'mon, even movies with 1/10th the budget of this thing don't take such liberties with common sense. If you want to electrify the exterior of a barn and two silos, you just hook up a generator to it? Oh, yeah. We are dumb aren't we? The problem was that the writers were so carried away with harping on the military for coming up with a solution that was extremely dangerous that they had to come up with some way of killing all the locusts in a completely safe way in order to draw a contrast between good and bad, but they just didn't have a clue how to do it in a way that anyone over the age of 9 wouldn't laugh at. Actually my 9 year old was laughing. Maybe the writers should have skipped the whole thing about demonizing the military, because they didn't have any better solution themselves? Nah, that would require maturity.
I give it 4 stars based solely on the performance of Lucy Lawless, which was really the only thing good about this.