Reviews

The only explanation for this movie having such a high start rating, considering both how bad it was and how many negative reviews have been posted, is that the makers must have people who go on IMDb and flood the site with 10 star scores. Seriously, what other possibility is there? I blame IMDb for this as much as the people who made the movie.

As for the movie itself, it is what should be expected from anything put out by Disney. Political correctness and girl power taking precedence over story and believability. It was irrelevant that the main character had no reason to be as competent as she was, except that she was a cute little girl, so nothing else mattered. Unlike Luke, who had to work hard at becoming a good at using the force, our brave heroine simply pulls it out of her pretty little butt and beats the stuffing out of the main villain. But then who cares? She's cute, right?

And as for Finn, is this the best they could come up with for the first black lead in the Star Wars films? A flaky sidekick to the main character? It's like the writers simply started with the idea of having a little girl and a black dude as the leads, then used a plot from a previous movie for the story. It's almost as if they followed what they thought was a can't miss formula that failed miserably in almost every way possible.

The only good aspects of the film came out of what they brought in from the previous movies. Han, Leia and the Millennium Falcon. But that and some awesome special effects are not enough to save it from becoming a festering pimple on the butt of the Star Wars franchise. One can only hope that they give up on making any additional movies and stop the bleeding before it is too late.

The title for this review is exactly what I thought when I first saw the poster for this movie before ever seeing it. Hollywood's predictability did not leave much to the imagination and it turns out I was dead on target. The plot basically centers around a female descendant of Rambo who is put into a modified version of the Running Man games, but with a twist. In this version kids brutally slaughter each other for the enjoyment of the masses – including you the movie goer. Now that's entertainment!

The story starts off in some bizarre post apocalyptic future where the powers that be hold an annual contest that pits children of various ages against one another in a battle to the death. Many of them are violently killed right at the beginning with several being viciously beaten to death by their larger opponents. But being in Hollywood's era of girl-power, our pretty little protagonist makes her escape, at which point the rest of the competitors should have just given up. And despite being in the wilds for at least several days, she manages to never look more than a little tired and maintains her fragile beauty as if she just stepped out of a shower and dressed in clean, but wet clothes.

But nonetheless this movie is a blockbuster, mostly because male viewers are aroused by the main character and female viewers actually think that she is somehow a realistic vision of what girls can do. And for these reasons, audiences will ignore the fact that they are watching a story - with a rating that allows any age to see it - about children killing children and never once wonder why society is so screwed up today.

On a final note, I have to wonder how IMDb has such a high rating for this movie considering the staggering amount of negative reviews that have been posted. Unfortunately, I think the rating system here has become somewhat compromised as it seems pretty easy for anyone to stack the votes early on.

When you have what seems like a perfect combination of actors (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter), director (Tim Burton) and story (Alice in Wonderland, what else needs to be said), you would expect something phenomenal. Yet somehow they managed to totally screwed it up.

Granted, the actress who played Alice was a little one dimensional and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen just plain gave me the creeps, but there is an overall shortcoming here that goes beyond any of the cast. Some of the blame would have to go to Burton for what seems to be a restrained attempted at creating Wonderland. It could have been a little darker in atmosphere (not so much to freak out kids of course) while at the same time do a better job at capturing the feel of Lewis's version with weird and magical creatures at every turn. But to be fair a considerable amount of fault has to lie on the script itself.

Something that strikes you from the start is the idea of someone coming back to a fairy tale world without ever recalling being there before. Didn't Robin Williams already do this in Hook? But more importantly, why did they feel it necessary to make it some sort of sequel to the original, especially when there has been nothing made on a scale like this before. But even if you accept it as the next step in the story, it seems odd that they would contradict so much of the original story.

One of the things that sticks out to me is the inclusion of the Jabberwock. It's existence was only in a fable with in the story. And even if one was expecting to stretch this as to the fable actually being some sort of prophecy, then Alice killing it is a total contradiction as it was killed by a boy in the original telling.

Another aspect is the handling of the White Queen. As described by Lewis, the White Queen was stupid, fat and helpless as an infant. Instead, in the movie she was thin and majestic with a bizarre habit of holding her hands up like she was about to field a punt.

As for Alice herself, she was for some reason written as a grumpy little brat who was pretty rude to most people (and animals), then in the end turns into supergirl, so much to the point that it's just plain goofy.

There is some good stuff here. Carter's portrayal of the Red Queen was perfect. And how they did that with her head is beyond me. Depp did an pretty good job, but I would have preferred that he looked a tad older, though it's not a big deal. Overall, the voice acting was great. The Cheshire Cat, Catapillar, The White Rabbit and even the little servant frogs all sounded dead on.

Perhaps I am just ticked off at the missed opportunity for making a grand scale retelling of the original story, but I honestly did go into this with high hopes anyway. I would love to see the same group (at least Burton, Depp and Carter) take a shot at the story the way Carrol originally wrote it, with a new screen writer and a less reserved Burton behind the camera. But that will never happen

District 9 is a good example of what happens when filmmakers are more concerned about their political message than they are making a good movie. Not to say that it is totally bad, but there are too many questions without sensible answers. I've listed some, but not all that I could come up with:

• Why did the space ship end up where it did? Was it simply a transport for sub-par aliens with the goal of just dumping them off on another planet? I suppose this is an analogy of humans being packed into boats and shipped off to another country that doesn't want them either. I would be fine with this, but it is never adequately explored in the movie.

• Were the aliens criminals or just really stupid? They briefly addressed this, but they never actually find out despite having learned their language.

• Once humans breached the hull of the spacecraft, why did they not set up shop after the aliens were brought down to the surface? Wouldn't there be a permanent research group of some kind in there?

• Why is a multinational corporation (MNU) put in charge of this as opposed to some new multi-governmental body or even the UN?

• Why did MNU put a cross between Inspector Clouseau and Basil Fawlty in charge of the eviction process?

• If the aliens are unintelligent rejects from another planet, why did they get a big honkin arsenal of weapons, including one that turns living flesh into red pudding in less than a second?

• After the live film documentation of the eviction process, why is the rest of the movie still shot the same way as if someone was there following the main character with a camera?

• How come the fluid that is used to power the spaceship also mutates people into aliens if it sprays in their face?

• Were the aliens originally 'prawns' or did they get a blast of the same magic fluid and transform from something else too?

• Why were tribal gangs allowed to trade cat food for advanced alien weaponry unchecked?

I know there are some messages in here, like big corporations are evil, humanity is still made up of insensitive barbarians and big men with guns are mean, but how about a little subtlety? Not to mention the obvious reference to apartheid since the whole thing took place in South Africa. This could have been a much better movie had they been concerned about the quality of the story as much as they were the quantity of the political statements.

I don't want to say it is a total loss though. The overall concept was interesting. And the amount of different alien weapon types obviously took some time to come up with. I'll even go as far as to say that I still somewhat liked the main character, but just not all the time. I could also comment on the quality of the special effects, but today that should be a given in a modern motion picture. I guess the upshot is, see Distrct 9 for the fun of it, but don't take it too seriously. You'll just end up with a list of questions that should have been answered.