Movie Reaction: Battleship

Formula:
The Room + Explosions
OR
Transformers - Things That Transform
OR
Star Trek's Plot + FNL's Cast + $100,000,000 Budget - Any Attempt to Question What They Were Doing

Cast: Let's break this down. Taylor Kitsch and Jesse Plemons are both from FNL and I worry that either's attachment to the movie (and Kitsch's to John Carter) will hurt their chances to do future movies. They do what they can here, but there's little to return on that investment. Liam Neeson is awesome. People make mistakes. He's not exempt. Brooklyn Decker was the worst actress in "Just Go With It". Let that sink in. Thank god she's pretty. Rihanna is making her acting debut. She's from Barbados or something, right? Well, they tried to mask that accent with an even more annoying one. Or maybe that's just how she talks. I don't know. She should stick to singing. It was interesting though, that she is a major sex symbol and they did not use her for that at all. That doesn't happen often.

Plot: Wow. Just, wow. Aliens are involved. They can travel through space but still have water based vehicles it seems. Yeah. There's no saving it. A large portion of this is a love letter to the Navy. That's nice, I guess. A lot of the beats of the movie, especially in the beginning uncomfortably reminded me of "The Room", which is never a selling point. They even convoluted a way to use the mechanics of the actual board game, so, I suppose props are due for coming up with a way to get that to work.
This plot is a mess. You either forgive it or suffer through 2 hours trying to make sense of it.

Elephant in the Room: Why did I even see this? I don't know. I sort of wanted firsthand knowledge of this train wreck. I mean, how did this get made? Sooooo much money went into it. Several cast members are too smart to be attached to this. Peter Berg is a really good director. There's a way to have done this movie sans aliens and make some painless popcorn fun. I just don't understand how such a miscalculation could have been made for this final product to make it to theaters.

To Sum Things Up:
 I can't think of a single person I know who I could recommend this too. No movie has deserved the "instant pop culture punchline" tag quite like this one. It's not even like I wish I got my $9 back. I'm more angry that I was put in the situation where this movie could exist. It was forgettable and painless in the worst possible way. And, the sad thing is, I'm still happy I saw it over The Dictator.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend