Reviews

The story is very thin and ridiculous, but carried well by Kevin Costner. Action! taking it slow. Action! Slow.. Action.. alternating.

The daddy-daughter issues and how they get back closer again, is decently written but still has some ridiculous things like daughter sneaking off to a rave and nearly getting raped if it weren't for daddy saving her. His repeated attempts to give her a bicycle. Her acting incredibly comfortable and relaxed all of the sudden, a- typical teen stuff. The daddy issue fix is way to easy.

This though, is not so bad as the funny and corny lines. The Italian accountant, trying to delay a probably painful questioning, by offering a recipe to the daughter. Hah. The newborn baby getting named after Kevin's character Ethan, for not killing them when he could? Doh! And lots of other misplaced clichés like his (ex?) wife looking up to him while getting in a cab, or spontaneously crying when she sees him dance with the girl. This was acceptable in the eighties and nineties movies. Now, we would like to see some better scripts, less misplaced dumb clichés.

Still, I can live with all that. It's just a movie with enjoyable images, scenes, actors and a story is being told.

The thing is, I got really irritated by the audio. It's like the sound engineer decided to add re-verb at random. I was watching this movie on netflix, so I checked it with a different copy which sounded exactly the same. OK it MIGHT be a technical issue with conversion from 5.1/dts/whatever to stereo. Still that is no excuse.

So be warned the audio might trip you off like it did me.

There is a lot of potential in the story - the viewer is warped into a postapocaliptic future, with mutated wildlife and unknown threats. However, this one deploys a group of teens which, quite predictable, make a mess of it. Basically it's a teen drama set in After Earth.

Do I believe it? No. Really. So humans combined a dozen spacestations, and now there's been a 500 - 1000? people living in there for 79 years, without supplies. Right.

One of those youngsters wears old pilot/bikers goggles as an accessory. Nice touch, but no. This guy is the first to swing on a rope. Yes, a (new) rope, just conveniently hanging over a river. The rope is badly camouflaged with some plants, but still it is shown for at least 10 seconds, clearly a rope. Now if I was the director, I would have that scene redone. Or perhaps they ran a tight budget and could not redo bad shots? The guy doesn't even use his goggles now he finally has a chance to. Good thing he gets killed seconds later. The 100 soon diminish to 98,97,96 ... it's just 99 bottles of beer on the wall all over again. The clothing seems pretty pristine for being 79 years old too.

Not too much effort was made to think "The 100" trough. Lets just try to make a teen hit series, but cheaply.

Will I watch episode 2? Nope.

Out of curiosity I watched the first episode of this new fantasy series. Well, fantasy it is - just not very good fantasy. Firstly we see Jason survive an imploding bathyscaphe at great depth, and wake up on a beach. Then we get to watch his naked torso for about 19 seconds flat, with nothing else in view at all. I guess it must be to bait and hook teenager girls. Oh, is that what it's about? Fortunately there's a set of new, perfectly fitting clothing right next to him, so he gets dressed. Next he walks into a city (where of course all speak modern-day English) and gets attacked by a two-headed dragon (for trying to touch it) and right after, by guards. Luckily he escapes and meets Pythagoras, who is apparently in some way related to Hercules, coming in next bossing Pythagoras around.

This, to me, looks like a bad dream of a confused scriptwriter on acid. Patiently I wait for the moment, where all of this idiocy gets to make some sense.

And yes, as soon as the next scene develops, it all falls into place. Many worlds, great forces, the oracle who is probably his mother, and the hint that Jason is the son of a very important man, or perhaps-a god.

From here, I can dream up the rest of the story. Jason probably gets challenged a lot, meets the love of his life (which is bound to be a problematic relationship), battles the Minotaur and many other foes of ancient mythology.

The city has 20000 inhabitants. They are all summoned to the palace square, where they are addressed by king Minos, to draw a stone. However, there are at most 1000 persons in the square, and many of them seem to have copies all over the square. Then they line up to each take a stone. It is not very speedy, on average everybody takes 12 seconds. By this rate, it all will be over in... 20.000x12/3600= 67 hours. All attended by the king, so that would have to be stretched over 8-hour days, adding up to a full week of selecting 7 people. If I were that king, I would have thought of a somewhat shorter and less boring method to select 7 out of 20000. But hey, when the day is done all 20000 have magically passed.

This little insult to my intelligence is just one of many. Now, I really don't expect a series like this to be historically of mythologically correct, or scientifically accurate, but hell - the scriptwriters should know how to do basic math and not try to defy common sense. I'm feeling so much vicarious shame for them, it's almost unbearable.

Pythagoras gets selected, and spends a last supper with his best friends Hercules and Jason (who he has just met, so yesterday Hercules was his only friend) and for the second time Pythagoras gets stereotyped for being obsessed with triangles. Shame!

Ah, the princess doubts her father - clearly SHE will get to be the love interest of Jason.

More goofs: Jason draws a sword, and inspects it. It is clearly visible the sword has no sharp edges, just a sharp point. Still, it will do and he takes it to fight a monster. What's he gonna do, puncture the beast? All clothes and garments look unused, brand new. Nothing is dirty or worn. BBC and Urban Myth Films, why don't you go take a lesson from the original Star Wars movies.

But most of all, it is so wrong to have Greek mythology take place in Atlantis, first of all because Atlantis is not even a myth, it is mentioned in ONE old story which got propagated in modern times. This series feed our youth with twisted and confused stories that pretend to be the real myths. I can't help feeling a bit sick of this. I feel sad for how mythology gets violated and replaced by this crap.

Sadly, the series is bound to get popular.

This comedy starts out as a flat tire with the main character just being an insecure wimp. The scenes are just way too long, not so funny, even not interesting. Bad acting. Bad studiowork: two parasailing sidekicks sound like they are in a very small chamber, in front of a greenkey, in stead of flying over a beach. I skipped through the movie to speed it up. Still found it slow and boring. The end, which I did not bother to watch, is probably something like everybody makes it back to the wedding in the nick of time, and the wimp gets the hottie. Yes, it reminds me of that actually funny movie "The Hangover", which this movie feels like - a hangover.

Steven M. Greer is central in this production, summarizing footage that was claimed as "proof" for decades already so nothing much new there. Unclear video's of old hoaxes and apparent moving lights, of which a few were definitely a lens flare. Images widely available and quite old.

Also he refers to the Brahmāstra weapon mentioned in the Mahabharata. That text is spiritual by nature, and some people claim it describes a nuclear weapon. But that is just a willful misinterpretation of a spiritual story, which is sometimes used as an argument to support the claim that alien civilizations have been interfering with humanity throughout history.

Greer refers to himself as an ER doctor, but he quit that line of work in 1997. He has not been a practicing doctor since, yet he is constantly referred to as doctor. I guess that is the one thing which gives him some credibility, and he milks that titles to the max.

We see Greer meditating, claiming that is the way to summon Alien ships. Also we see Greer carry a sidearm. Paranoid? Yeah, I thought so too.

Then, attention shifts towards an all-embracing conspiracy theory: new and better energy sources are claimed to be prevented from ever getting patented. The Bilderberger group. And other.

Three items are shown that would have to fit the bill of disclosure: a free energy device, which is clearly a simple coil picking up a magnetic field from under the table to power a light bulb. This is probably the lowest Greer is going, to support his claims. Does he actually believe that "free energy" device, I wonder. To me it made me think of the youtube video's of cellphones apparently causing corn to pop, while in fact they hid parts of a microwave oven under the table. No effort was made in the movie, to show the "free energy" device in a less suspicious experimental setup.

The "miniature alien" was confirmed to be human by researcher Garry Nolan from Stansford University, though Greer claims it was proved alien by the same Garry Nolan!

Lies, lies lies.

Finally, a device was shown that allegedly lost weight when in motion. Let me think a reason why this isn't allover the papers by now. Ow, right, because it's a fake, just like the "free energy" device.

The fact this movie did not disclose ANYTHING is widely supported by the lack of any scientific news, like scientists baffled over the shown devices - which would inevitably get picked up by the media. But of course, there is a huge conspiracy preventing such publications.

So looking back, there was a big promotion campaign promising major disclosure in a free movie. But it is just a commercial production cleverly devised to snatch $10 out of every UFO-believer's wallet. It is a clever con.

I can't say I'm surprised.

This movie was rated as the worst ever, but I thought is was done quite well. You'd have to think of the target audience: Eighties kids, teenagers. They didn't mind the clumsy muppet play, it's a compelling story at a nice pace. A family of aliens gets taken from god knows where, could be a moon of Saturn by the looks of it, back to Earth by an automated NASA explorer spacecraft. They get into a big turmoil at the NASA base, but escape in the confusion. The youngest one gets separated and lands with a family which is just moving in the state. After that, things indeed look somewhat like E.T. There are folks here saying it is all stolen from E.T., well that must be true, though there wasn't anything really reminding me of ET - it is only when I consciously compare the scripts, certain things look similar. There were some really weird things yes like the obvious referring to McDonalds (must be a sponsor), Coca Cola as the beverage of choice for the aliens - it even brought them back to life. the McDonalds scene is pretty weird but hey - nobody said this movie shouldn't be. Dancers all around, even on the parking lot, freaking out on a kids party - Ronald McDonald is there too. The funniest goof is when the waitress hands out empty cups with straws, one falls on the ground, the younger girl picks it up - they didn't even bother to redo that scene, probably because it was a ridiculous scene anyway. Finally, all ends brilliantly, the aliens adept really well, and become true Americans!

The acting, screenplay, music and general production were of genuine B- movie quality. Only the special effects were not as good as one would expect in production with a reasonable budget like this one. Bud kids, in the time of the release, weren't that picky like they are now in this 3d animated era. Did I find this movie entertaining? Surprisingly, yes I did!