An astronaut (Mills) is on a long distance mission when his aircraft is damaged by an asteroid field resulting in him crash-landing on an unknown planet. He soon learns that he's not alone on this planet and there are several terrifying creatures who see him as a meal. Along for the ride is a young girl who is the only other survivor of the crash the trouble is they both don't speak the same language...
65 is another film that has a semi-decent concept, but has seemingly no way of developing it into anything more than merely an interesting idea...
Basic failings with the film start with the early narrative (or lack thereof). Mills is on a 2 year mission; he's doing it for his daughter, but we're never privvy as to why or what this mission is about? What is he getting for her? What is wrong with her? Some may see this as being unimportant, but for me I need to have a basic involvement in a film in order to get something out of it, something which was, very difficult to achieve with 65.
When the action moves to 65 million years BC the same problems exist, but further problems are added (I reckon Jay-Z had less problems than this film). You effectively have a young girl and a man wandering round a pre-historic Earth battling dinosaurs... had the film being either more fun or more action-packed then this may have worked but honestly the best way to describe this film would be "JURASSIC PARK on prozac." It's pretty boring, the characters of Mills and Koa have zero chemistry and barring one or two moments the film has little in the way of suspense or tension. The best moments are probably when they are trapped in the rocks.
The ending is a bit stupid and unlikely; they find their escape vessel and despite it being smashed to smithereens and knocked about left, right and centre, their aircraft has enough working parts for them to enable their escape and survive their endeavour.
Had the film being better conceived, had the characters been more engaging and interesting and had the story had more thought about it and being fleshed out better then I may have let the silly ending go....after all who doesn't want the protagonists to survive against seemingly impossible odds??
You'll get none of this here though the chances are you'll either be scratching your head at the vague non-existent narrative or the genuine lack of action and chemistry amongst the characters.
As I say all of this made a 90 minute film feel like it was 65 million years long.
65 is another film that has a semi-decent concept, but has seemingly no way of developing it into anything more than merely an interesting idea...
Basic failings with the film start with the early narrative (or lack thereof). Mills is on a 2 year mission; he's doing it for his daughter, but we're never privvy as to why or what this mission is about? What is he getting for her? What is wrong with her? Some may see this as being unimportant, but for me I need to have a basic involvement in a film in order to get something out of it, something which was, very difficult to achieve with 65.
When the action moves to 65 million years BC the same problems exist, but further problems are added (I reckon Jay-Z had less problems than this film). You effectively have a young girl and a man wandering round a pre-historic Earth battling dinosaurs... had the film being either more fun or more action-packed then this may have worked but honestly the best way to describe this film would be "JURASSIC PARK on prozac." It's pretty boring, the characters of Mills and Koa have zero chemistry and barring one or two moments the film has little in the way of suspense or tension. The best moments are probably when they are trapped in the rocks.
The ending is a bit stupid and unlikely; they find their escape vessel and despite it being smashed to smithereens and knocked about left, right and centre, their aircraft has enough working parts for them to enable their escape and survive their endeavour.
Had the film being better conceived, had the characters been more engaging and interesting and had the story had more thought about it and being fleshed out better then I may have let the silly ending go....after all who doesn't want the protagonists to survive against seemingly impossible odds??
You'll get none of this here though the chances are you'll either be scratching your head at the vague non-existent narrative or the genuine lack of action and chemistry amongst the characters.
As I say all of this made a 90 minute film feel like it was 65 million years long.