zadmando

Battlefield Earth Review
By Zadmando

The wife and I watched Battlefield Earth last night. Why? Because I hate her and I want her to leave me for some one with better taste in movies. (JOKE) Actually, we had just seen Mission to Mars and despite all the bad reviews we liked it! You can stop reading now if you disagree. Anywhoo… Oh, yeah. We thought, “Hey, maybe the reviews for this movie could be wrong, too! Let’s prove those smug critics wrong!” And so, with smugness and verisimilitude (I just tossed that word in there) we fed the DVD into my film-playing friend. What happened? Read on!

It was crap! Crap! Big piles of screaming, steaming, beaming CRAP! John Travolta plays Joey, a guy who just wants to dance, but his father wants him to be a priest. So, he takes over Earth and overacts in a bad latex and leather combo (which is featured extensively in the amazing extras). He has a job and laughs a lot. But not a funny laugh. An EVIL laugh. And, he has a helper, a heroin using jazz musician played by Forest Whitaker, who is the only black man from the planet Psyclo so he gets to be made fun of for being so stupid. The movie has a hero, (Barry Pepper) and he does stuff for no reason. He gets a band of other people together and then they all do things for no reason, but for FREEDOM! In movie talk that means that no matter how assy a plan is it will work because it will help humans overcome alien oppressors. Then, there is a lot of running around and stuff happens, then more stuff happens and more running. And the camera is always tilting, tilting. Then it ends.

I know that summery made no sense. Yet, reading over it again, it is actually clearer and more entertaining than the movie itself. AND, it cost me almost nothing to make! Of course, I pass the savings on to you. You’re welcome! This movie is all about spectacle and nothing about story or character. Unfortunately, the spectacle is ugly and stupid. There are so many things than do not make any sense that I cannot even begin to list them all. However, I did like one 15 second scene introducing the education machine. Besides that, this movie was a waste of time energy and money, and I hear Mr. Travolta is making a sequel! Note to John, complete the crapfest by having it co-star Dan Aykroyd

DVD

This is for the geeks. The picture looked fine. With all the solid color schemes, I saw no bleeding, even on my very standard set-up. The letterboxing looked very tight. I doubt that is because of the authoring, it probably looked this squeezed in the theater. Note to director, if you are going to use a wide aspect ratio, don’t do everything in close ups, it makes the film look cheap.

The sound was awful! You could hear every word of painful dialogue! (JOKE) I have an old Dolby surround system, and it sounded fine to me.

EXTRAS!

Now we are talking! It is my growing opinion that making -of featurettes for awful movies rock pretty damn hard. After sitting though a decidedly painful experience like this one, it is refreshing to watch the people who made the dung heap wax poetic on how “everything came together and just flowed.” My favorite part of the doc were the constant references to Star Wars. That film is mentioned over and over and over again, until you start wondering, “Star Wars was a good movie. I liked Star Wars. I should have watched Star Wars. Why didn’t I watch Star Wars?” There are two other smaller docs, which repeat the same information. One extra I found a bit interesting was a brief biography on the novel Battlefield Earth. It won a lot of awards and sounds like a good read. I wonder what happened. I cannot comment on the commentary track, as I did not listen to it. Well, I listened long enough to make sure that no one was going to make the apology I deserved for watching this dreck.


In conclusion

Wow, was this film bad. I noticed at my local retailers that the DVD is selling for under $15. I like the price. Now let’s do the same for GOOD films. But, I kid.

Rating

CRAP (out of four stars)

Dazed

I saw this in the cinema after having quite a few beers and couldnt stop laughing.

The only way to see this steaming pile of poo is when drunk

supergenius

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.....in the immortal words of Juliette Lewis (NBK). I actually paid money for this movie after reading the book (which is amazing by the way). I would rather have a sharp stick poked in my eye than watch it again. Do not, I repeat, do not waste your money, especially if you have read the book. One question: how do caveman like humans learn to fly a F-16 fighter jet after one day of showing signs of intelligence. In the book it took months of flight school-like training....

Note to Mr. Travolta: please, please do not make a sequel to this movie.

Well, enough ranting....

pagemaster7

This was a film that wasted 2 hours of my life. We should start a class action suit(the pain and suffering damages would be incredible).

Birdcell

So I assume it's not worth renting just for oh-god-this-is-so-bad yuks?

My current favorite movie critic Paul Tatara warned viewers: http://www.goodauthority.org/buzz/00...19/db00519.htm

More from Tatara's "Worst of 2000":

"I'm not the kind of person who says you should watch a movie because it's so bad, it's good. As far as I'm concerned, you're better off watching movies that are so good they're good. But this time I'll make an exception. The dream project of producer-star John Travolta, Battlefield Earth is based on an L. Ron Hubbard science fiction novel that may or may not have been written with a large crayon. Simply put, it's the most idiotic big-budget effects picture in film history."

[Edited by Birdcell on 04-20-01 at 11:08 AM]

zadmando

Showgirls is so bad it's good. This is so bad, it blows. Don't waste your time. This is Batman and Robin bad. Nothing but Trouble bad. Rent ANYTHING else. Rent Carnosaur. Rent Anaconda. TWICE! You will thank me.

Sleeper

Yeah! This movie compares with Batman and Robin as being one of the worst high budget movies ever! If they do a sequel, as JT has announced, they better get a new director, editor, FX folks, - the whole stuff. They shouldn't make a sequel, they should remake the movie and use the original story ideas. They were pretty good. I can't believe that they didn't even use the coolest schene from the book, when Johnny was riding flying tank of a global gasbomb, using a alien aircraft to penetrate the bomb and disarm it from inside.

This movie was worse than the home movie I made about 1st person stealing cookies from a jar.

Mission to Mars is a masterpiece compared to this bad, bad, bad, bad, bad movie. I wonder how Red Planet is compared with MtM and BE.

necros

Don't even waste the $3 to rent it.. just wait a while, I'm sure it'll be hitting the networks like UPN any day now.. they'll prolly show it at 4AM, but still

Ejunior2

This was the best darn review of the worst movie I've ever seen.

Thanks for the yuck.

bizquik

I will never watch this movie, and I hate all non-pulp fiction Travola Films. My only problem with your review is the knock on Aykroyd, Why? I mean he has been in some bad movies but to say he should co-star in BE2 thats just low.

He has been in too many classics. If anybody is going to co-star w/ John in BE2 it has to be Brendan Fraser.


<-- Brendan Fraser

MrVette99

verisimilitude

Hoc

I have repeatedly said it. Check my sig.

MrBEAViS

After hearing all the bad reviews and people calling it the worst film ever made, I just had to see it. I assumed it would be cheesy, or I could at least laugh at how bad it was. Boy was I wrong. This movie is just BAD, it hurts to watch it. It has absolutely NO ENTERTAINMENT VALUE, even on a "haha this movie is so bad its funny" level. I couldn't get through half an hour of this crap. DO NOT RENT THIS FILM, even out of morbid curiosity.

FTase

after reading this great review, I bought the movie from amazon. till waiting for its delivery.

Frank S

The reviewer hates the film so much but he takes 15-20 minutes to write thie review thus wasting even further time with this film! He must be a gluten for punishment!

derekD

Appaerntly, I am the only erson in America that didn't mind Battlefield Earth. Go ahead, make fun, but the end battle was at least a mild diversion and had some pretty decent shots. I listened to the commentary on the disc and it helped a lot to hear what they were TRYING to do. I am a fan of Travolta (with the exception of Micheal and Lucky Numers which were both terrible and A Civil Action, Primary Colors, Mad City were all BORING, I guess I only like a few of his films, so I'm not a fan). But anyway, Battlefield Earth is a great late night, I'm drunk as hell, or Wednesday afternoon and I'm sick and delirious film. I hope they go through with the planned sequel just to see it. They couldn't make the same mistakes twice, plus it will be one of the first ever sequels to a big Bomb. The DVD's cheap and has some interesting content and I feel a lot of people just dump on it due to lack of originality. Don't trust other people reviews, hell BLADE RUNNER was a huge flop upon release, as was John Carpenter's THE THING. And people seem to forget that this film was a low budget offering it only cost about 25 million with 30 million spent on marketing. A typical summer film can cost almost three times that amount. Sorry, I was just bored and sick of the same old whiny, pseudo-intellectual, holier-than-though reviews. A give Battlefield Earth a star and a half which is more than I would give successful films like SCARY MOVIE and BLESS THE CHILD.

Boot

That was the funniest review I've read in a long time. Well done.

Pudthai

I bet the commentary on the dvd is hilarious.

FTase

wrong. Michael Jackson is Bad.

fargus

...at least Howard the Duck had Lea Thompson in a short skirt!

sfsdfd

That struck me as really funny for some odd reason.

- David Stein

TELawrence

I just watched it out of curiousity. I was shocked to find that while it did suck, the utter hatred presented here should only be reserved for movies like NOTLD:30th.

This movie no nowhere near as bad as NOTLD:30 or even Plan 9 for that matter. In fact, I liked some of the original 'ideas' and was curious the entire way on how the movie was going to end. Hell, out of bordem I'd even watch a sequel...

What shocked me the most was that this movie was no worse (or better) than 90% of the special effects garbage that is ravenously being consumed by the American public. The Friggin Mummy 2 almost got the highest gross opening in history! It's no better the BF:Earth! ID4, Godzilla, Mummy 1, they're all the same godless CGI trash...

Are peoples tastes/standards are finally improving?!
If so, then BF:Earth did something good!

MrBEAViS

Yes, extremely worse than brazil, because Brazil was great. Oh, and there is no word, "badder".

Kaffe_02

Actuall I think the jets they were flying were harriers and not F-16, F-16 cannot hover like the ones that were used in the movie

Skywa|ker

I'm with derekD and TELawrence on this one... Battlefield Earth was not -that- bad. It wasn't great... it wasn't even good, but it was not a steaming pile of $#|+. Let's face it, there are -plenty- of bad movies out there that rank well below B.E.. It does help if you've read the book and know the plot in advance... you can then see where they've had to cut major corners in the story to even cover half of the book. This, of course, leaves the movie with some pretty gaping plot holes; they would have been much better sticking to the plot from the book, as closely as possible. As it stands, I was able to derive at least some enjoyment from the movie. It definitely could have been better, but there you go.