Reviews

To say Drumline: A New Beat was predictable is, well, predictable. The female lead goes from an ultra successful, intelligent, self assured but pampered high school senior inundated with full academic scholarships from top universities to lack-luster, insecure college freshman whose only goal, only passion is to play in a marching band at so-so college as a P1 drummer in the center of the front line. And throughout the movie there is little if any, mention of anything to do with actual day to day requirements and the reason for attending college....(classes, grades, studying and earning a degree) just high school like drama of being in the marching band. The college, A&T, while never mention in the film as such, appears to be an HBCU (Historically Black College and Universities) as the only white -or Asian, Hispanic- people are seen in the background and only briefly. Additionally, the fictional A&T marching band is reminiscent of Florida A&M University's marching band that was disbanded and several members were prosecuted for the death of Robert Champion, one of it's members as a direct result of hazing. I won't go into how many stereo-types were displayed throughout the movie (gold chains, black males calling black women "bi!ch", chocolate used to describe black skinned men being black). Finally, when all is said and done, this is still just a movie about high school "band geeks" that are now college "band geeks". A movie where they try to equate the demands, rigors and competition of playing in a college marching band to those of playing a college level sport be it football, wrestling, basketball or swimming. In this regard, they failed.

Just a slice of pure sci-fi fun. Enjoyed the actor playing the part of Wyatt. He was also enjoyable to watch in TAKEN. Always appreciate live action movies as the CGI has been far over done. The characters interact well and their development isn't over hindered by a straight forward plot. The guys play well off of each others giving a real feel of friendship, although strained during this incident. The female character, Hope comes across as truly upset and angry at the invasion of her home. An invasion by both Wyatt's friends and the ALIEN The scenes are well plotted and work well in terms of continuity. The alien creature is sufficiently nasty ad as fun to watch as the creature in ALIEN. I own the DVD and watch it frequently.

I enjoy most all sci-fi movies, even the silly, absurd and produced by Asylum! And when the military is portrayed in the film, it's fun to see the technical inaccuracies of the uniforms (form military officer)above and beyond those required to avoid being charged with impersonating a military officer. Many times my son, also former military, will see we can detect the most inaccuracies in the film regarding weapons, uniforms, protocol, etc....all for fun. I enjoyed this little outing from Asylum. It contained enough action, decent CGI for the budget and a couple of recognizable actors. They also weaved in a couple of sub plots between various characters...no spoiler here. I did notice that they used the name of an active duty Ohio class SSBN (USS Maine)and a fictional USN USS Nemesis (appeared to be a cruiser)as it was destroyed....a nice touch. Suggest view this movie when you have some free time or on a snowy day, as I did.