Aggressively stupid, unengaging and ridiculous, "Battleship" has very little to do with the game it's "based on" and even less to do with good summer entertainment.
The film stars Taylor Kitsch as Alex Hopper, a ne'er-do-well who, when we meet him, is trying to impress a woman (Brooklyn Decker) at a bar. For some reason, the bartender refuses to serve her a microwaved burrito ... and she really wants one.
So what does Alex do? He bets her he can get her a burrito in 5 minutes ... and breaks into a convenience store across the street to get one.
This, of course, infuriates Alex's brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgaard of "True Blood"), a naval commander who has his own ship. He insists that Alex join him in the Navy to straighten himself out.
Cut to two years later: Alex is a Lieutenant on a ship (a senior officer in two years?) and participating in Naval exercises that involve taking a fleet of ships out to sea and playing a soccer game (well, you see ... the soccer game comes first, but ... is it really important?).
Also, Alex wants to marry Burrito Girl, only her dad is an Admiral (Liam Neeson, whose expression suggests he has no idea how he arrived on set every morning) who doesn't like Alex. So he chooses opportune times to get the old man to like him, such as during a dedication ceremony where the Admiral is addressing a crowd that includes Korean War veterans.
Then aliens arrive, and the rest of the film is sort of like watching a disco ball. It's awfully sparkly and shiny, but not particularly interesting.
Sure, the special effects are great, but they're largely wasted. We are never told what the aliens are or what they want. Hopper assumes they're malevolent and attacks them, but the aliens only seem to fire in self-defense and back off when attacks stop.
They're also not particularly strategy-minded. We soon learn their communications ship has crashed, so they attempt to commandeer one of our satellites to send a message home. Whether they aim to summon an invasion force or a diplomatic convoy, we have no idea. But let's fry the bastards before we can find out, shall we?
Their design is somewhat compelling (though really derivative of "Transformers"), but we don't get a good enough sense of them as characters to understand them, their motivations or what they are. They are generic baddies that look great and wear these fascinating "HALO"-type suits, but we rarely get to see what the suits actually do.
It's almost as if director Peter Berg (who has made some terrific films, including "Friday Night Lights," "The Rundown," and "The Kingdom") was making a spoof of the rah-rah jingoistic summer blockbuster. And if he is ... well, the film still stinks because it never gets to that level where the characters take that next step and become parodies. (See "Starship Troopers" for the right way to do such a thing.)
And yes, the film rises to ultra-patriotic heights when Hopper and his crew (which includes pop singer Rihanna, of all people, in the tough-chick role, and she's not good) find themselves in need of a battleship. Their solution, and the oh-so-convenient (not to mention ludicrous) development that helps them in their quest, is as ridiculous as anything you'll ever see in a movie.
As if he didn't show us enough in "John Carter," Kitsch again shows the charisma of a wet tree branch in the lead role, while Skarsgaard and Neeson are wasted in smaller roles.
Decker is really fun to look at but doesn't bring much in the way of acting skills. This would be fine given her role, but she's thrust into a ridiculous subplot involving a double amputee and the scientist in charge of the satellite in which the aliens have taken interest. (It's yet another script contrivance where her character just so happens to be in the area of the focal point of the aliens' interest.)
There is one sequence where the characters actually "play" the game, and it's a fun nod to the "source material" but isn't nearly as compelling as it should be.
"Battleship" is "Pearl Harbor" meets "Independence Day" without the sublety and restraint of Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich.
Yes, I realize how ridiculous that last sentence is. But it is accurate in this case.