Critical miss

If you can make it through the first 60 excruciating minutes of “Battleship,” the last 30 minutes are actually pretty good. The beginning is slow, unnecessarily slow, and at one point I felt my eyelids getting heavy.

The writers and director tried so hard to avoid making a great action movie with no plot that they ended up going too far in the opposite direction. The film is essentially 30 minutes of a great action with no plot, preceded by boring plot and no action.

Rihanna’s acting chops are surprisingly decent, which is a plus for her fans, but it doesn’t save the movie. Don’t waste your money to see this in the theater. Wait until it’s a dollar at Redbox and fast-forward until you see big explosions. The rest of the movie, loosely based on the equally boring Hasbro game of the same name, is pointless.

Things blow up and your American pride might swell, but not before you’re bored and wishing you’d gone to see something else.

By Erin Carson