• Movies

by Arcee on 02.22.12

Admittedly, I did not really want to see This Means War this past weekend. Well, it wasn’t my first choice. But seeing as how my wife and I didn’t really get to spend Valentine’s Day with each other, and I was treating her to a date night, This Means War sounded more appealing to her than The Woman in Black. So after a dinner for two at California Pizza Kitchen, we headed in to watch her choice. Now, while I have some reservations about the film, overall I was entertained. Simply put, I don’t like the movie, but I don’t dislike it either. It kind of falls in the middle of what I find entertaining and what I do not. So that kind of leaves the movie in this kind of limbo according to my taste.

First, let me tell you what I did not like about the movie. This Means War is loud and clumsy and seems to trip over its own feet at every turn. More importantly, I don’t think it works as a romantic movie. Now, while the movie foregoes a lot of the spy action to make you think that it is really a romantic comedy – that is where the movie fails. The romantic plot here seems more in line with something I would expect to see from films like American Pie or The Hangover. Especially when you have that annoying, haggard mouthpiece Chelsea Handler screaming “sex tiebreaker” at one point in the film. Really? Of course, with director McG at the helm of this one I should not have expected any less. But the one really burning annoyance I had with the film was that Reese Witherspoon lacked that appeal, that raw sexual appeal, to make it believable that these two studs were really that interested in her. Cute yes; but drop dead gorgeous I’m-going-to-kill-you-to-get-her beautiful – I don’t think so.

What I did like about the film was the interaction between Chris Pine and Tom Hardy. Now, while the rest of the film may have been a little lackluster, these two actors really seemed to give the relationship between their characters their all. Not that it could save the movie from multiple other failures, but watching Pine and Hardy work with each other was fun and interesting. Perhaps they can work together again opposite each other in a future Star Trek film… Really, those two saved the movie for me. Looking back, This Means War would have better been served as something else McG has already presented in his career. Yes, I am alluding to the fact that Charlie’s Angels is a better film that This Means War.

In the end, This Means War fails to really succeed as a romantic/action/comedy film. Should the crew have focused on maybe getting one of the three descriptors right, This Means War could have worked as such; instead, the multi-focus of the film takes away from any of the respective genres it tries to present here. They really missed the mark by leaving out the action part of the film for much of the movie as Pine and Hardy could have really done more if they had more to save the film. Still, what they do is make it bearable to watch – just maybe at least once though.