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Reviews
Star Wars: Battle Pod (2015)
Lousy excuse for a game
Star Wars Battle Pod looks amazing - a completely enclosed cabinet with a parabolic projection screen inside. It costs a whopping two pounds to play and you get to choose between five different stages - where you get to fly an x-wing, snow speeder, speeder bike or even TIE fighter, depending on which stage you choose. Controls consist of a control stick and a throttle lever, although this is a rail shooter. And as I soon found out, it's not a very good one.
So I put my money in and picked the first stage - the Death Star battle at Yavin. Then the game begins - all two minutes of it. Up go the first red flags - we're starting off right above the Death Star trench with a large, intrusive reticule in the middle of the screen. The second red flag was the redundant throttle lever - it doesn't actually do anything besides make 'speed lines' appear on the screen and blow air in your face (while inside a space ship), but doesn't otherwise appear to speed up or slow down the game.
Once you're eventually given control of the game, you then fight off the single TIE fighter that attacks you in exactly the same way every time. It shows up on the screen, conveniently hanging around in front of you until a 'Danger' sign appears next to it. If you don't manage to destroy it in time, it suddenly shoots off ahead before turning around and hitting you. TIE fighters are the only enemy you face and they all follow this same exact same behaviour pattern. None of them attack you from varied angles or follow an interesting or varied path.
Destroying enemies is simply a matter of lining them up on the screen and pressing fire, which rewards you with large, intrusive yellow text and numbers ('GOOD'/'EXCELLENT' etc. or 'LOW POWER', which keeps flashing in front of you with annoying frequency every time you fire too many shots) as if to remind you that you're playing a video game - and the 'change view' button doesn't make them go away. TIE fighters, which die after a single shot in the movies and every previous Star Wars game now have to be shot repeatedly for some reason. Occasionally, you'll encounter multiple TIE fighters on screen and be prompted to press a different fire button, at which point you'll be rewarded with an immersion-busting slow motion sequence and more large yellow text.
Eventually, you'll enter the final sequence where you have to fight off Darth Vader (who, like all the other enemies, just flies in front of you and takes hits - no challenge whatsoever; I don't know if he actually fights back) before hitting the exhaust port and completing the level.
Quite possibly the poorest, most anti-climactic interpretation of the battle of Yavin I've seen to date. Too lazy, too short, with too much immersion-breaking junk on the screen, as well as the modern movie trend of having too much going on at once. So on to the next level...
Oh wait - that's it. Game over. You don't get to progress regardless of how well you did. So you don't get a lot for your money. The second stage is the battle of Hoth where you're flying a snow speeder shooting down TIE fighters (even though there weren't any in the movie) - it's basically the previous Yavin level all over again - all 2 minutes of it - but with a different background and practically nothing else to shoot at. The other stages aren't much better, with little to no variation in gameplay or replay value.
The website offers a super deluxe version of this cabinet for a meagre $100,000, which seems a little steep for twelve minutes of inferior gameplay, in my opinion and Star Wars Battle Pod doesn't hold a candle to the 1998 Star Wars Trilogy or even the 1983 Arcade game with its wireframe graphics. It's too easy, too short and ironically - too dull. There isn't really anything redeeming about it besides the graphics, but that's a given nowadays. Don't believe the hype.
Lessons in Lifesaving (2011)
Meh
This is one of those movies that probably looked better on paper than it did in film. It's a short story about a girl named Skye who wants to be a celebrity lifeguard and needs this woman (Nikki) to help her train for some unknown reason. I've no idea how Skye knows that Nikki has life-guarding skills in the first place or why she's so keen on having Nikki in particular do it, despite being rebuffed and almost drowned by her; the character is far too young to have sexual motives, so the entire situation seems a bit contrived.
Having said that, it sort of works overall, even if some of the dialogue is silly in places. Nikki is being constantly tailed by a minder and apparently has some sort of dark secret that's never revealed (this sounded like a far more interesting plot device, but unfortunately it doesn't go anywhere). Yeah, okay I get the plethora of obvious metaphors, but the implication that the Skye "saves her life" (in a manner that no one - especially not a kid - ever would), isn't exactly true; after all's said and done, Nikki's situation is no better at the end than it was as at the start.
On a final note: The casting left me somewhat puzzled. The only named character that I remember was Skye (I don't think Nikki's name was ever mentioned) and I don't remember any of the other named characters either, so I'm left wondering who they were. Maybe there's an extended cut floating around somewhere - that might explain a lot.
The Borrowers (2011)
A Flawed Adaptation
The Borrowers is the latest film adaptation of the famous book series by Mary Norton and this time it's received a 21st century makeover. It tells the story of the Clocks, a family of little people who live beneath the floorboards of a recession-hit house, owned by an eccentric grandmother (Wood) and her grandson, James (Hiscock). The Clocks survive thanks to Pod (Eccleston), who goes on expeditions to "borrow" (i.e. steal) food and other items at night, or while the house is empty. He lives with his wife, Homily (Horgan) and his daughter, Arrietty (Loftus), who he is extremely protective of. But the adventurous Arrietty resents being kept underground and one night decides to sneak out on her own, only to be discovered by James, who she quickly becomes friends with. Unfortunately, they later attract the attention of James's grandmother and subsequently that of the villainous Professor Mildeye (Fry), who is convinced that the Borrowers exist and believes that capturing them will make him famous.
The main thing that bothered me about this film was the casting. While it makes sense to recruit well known actors, it doesn't follow that simply loading a film with famous names is going to result in a successful production. Eccleston's talents, for instance, seem to be a bit wasted in his role as Pod and he's never really given much chance to shine. Robert Sheehan seemed to be playing a carbon copy of that irritating "Mutt" character from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (complete with motorcycle and leather jacket), which I thought was a bad move, and watching Sheehan struggling to describe his character during a TV interview didn't exactly inspire confidence, either. Aisling Loftus was probably the biggest miscast of the film and her performance border-lined on embarrassing – she looks too old to be playing Arrietty, and her character ended up looking and sounding more like a mentally-challenged adult than a kid; the expressions of excitement and wide-eyed wonder that look appropriate on the face of a child don't quite look right on the face of a woman in her twenties. But having said that, Victoria Wood played a good part and Stephen Fry brought with him his unique, show-stealing brand of wit.
The story itself was passable, although the idea that an adventurous sixteen year old who has spent her entire life living in a small area beneath the floorboards has never tried to sneak outside before strains credibility somewhat, especially when "outside" is so easily accessible. The humour is pretty thin on the ground and mostly aimed at kids, which is fair enough, but the romance (featuring another Borrower named Spiller (Sheehan) who Arrietty meets later in the film) seemed rather perfunctory and should have been left out altogether. It's not like the two characters make a very convincing match anyway. Also, Spiller's sudden appearance when Arrietty is in trouble, as well as his off-screen escape at the end smacked of deus ex machina. Overall, the production values left a lot to be desired, ranging from sudden accent changes to the green screen compositing, which in some scenes was pretty awful. The characterisation was a little clumsy in places too, such as the part where Pod and Homily stand around talking about which personality traits Arrietty has inherited from who. She's clever and courageous, apparently – or so her mother says. How she knows this when she's been kept inside a small room her entire life is a mystery. But then again, we don't see much evidence of it when she's not under the floorboards, either. The rescue plan, for instance, seems to have been James's idea, with Arrietty and Spiller just along for the ride. It's a classic example of too much telling and not enough showing.
Ultimately, despite being watchable, there was too much about the latest incarnation of The Borrowers that just didn't measure up.
Dive (2010)
Silly and contrived.
Dive is a two-part film that centres around the life of a talented fifteen year old diver named Lindsey (Aisling Loftus) whose ambition is to join the British Olympic team in 2012. One day, she returns from practice to find that her father is leaving and her mother is in the house with her new boyfriend. Upset by this turn of events, she begins to go off the rails, meeting up with friends and drinking in the park. It's then that she meets a sixteen year old boy named Robert (Jack O'Connell). They quickly become friends and end up having unprotected sex, which results in Lindsey becoming pregnant, putting her Olympic ambitions under threat.
The main problem with Dive is that neither the plot nor the characters carry even the slightest whiff of authenticity. In fact, the characterisation in Dive is so bad that it ought to be held up as an example to teach aspiring directors and screenwriters of how not to do it. For starters, it doesn't help that Lindsey herself is an unlikeable character; passive, dull and despondent, who seems to spend most of her time staring into space. There doesn't seem to be any convincing reason for her to be this way. We don't see her having any problems at school and neither her parents, nor her mother's boyfriend are shown to be in any way abusive, violent or negligent. If anything, they're shown to be caring and supportive. Not that it would matter, as Lindsey shows little affection towards either of her parents anyway, which makes the whole "off the rails" scenario look rather implausible. When Lindsey becomes pregnant and she is unsure of whether to keep the baby or not, no reason is given to make us believe that she would risk her ambitions in order to pursue family life; at no point do we ever see a religious, maternal or nurturing side to her character. Presumably, the writers didn't think it important to include any of this. And neither was any real attempt made to make Lindsey's relationship with Robert look convincing; they go from meeting to sex in less than five minutes of screen time, with no chemistry to speak of. The writers obviously didn't want to waste time establishing their relationship in an interesting, meaningful way that might actually endear us to either of these characters.
After a while, it becomes clear that the whole situation is ridiculous and that the characters are being made to behave in an implausible manner just to create drama and to drive the plot forward (In an interview, Loftus tried to handwave this by explaining that Lindsey's decisions were "instinctive," just in case anyone mistook her character for a thinking human being.) So it should come as no surprise that after listening to the actors describing their characters that they rarely – if ever – resemble anything seen on screen. Nowhere do we see any evidence of Lindsey being "brave," "astute" or possessing tremendous foresight, for instance. Likewise, nowhere do we see Robert's alleged charisma (not unless "Are you a princess?" and " You're gorgeous," are what pass for charisma nowadays.) But then again, the actors can absolve themselves of responsibility, as the blame clearly lies on the shoulders of the writers. If we populated Dive with characters that acted true to form, Lindsey would probably never have got pregnant in the first place and there wouldn't be a story. The result of all this is a film that only works providing you don't think about it, and even then there are other problems, such the musical score, which is droning and intrusive in equal measure. The dialogue is sparse and unremarkable. And then there's the symbolism, which is sometimes delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
But what makes it so much worse is the way that the people involved in the production kept going on about how "natural," "honest" and "realistic" it all was (the frequency of these words is rather suspicious). If challenged to point out evidence in support of this, I have no doubt they'd struggle to do so.