Idiocracy Triumphs

Rating: 2/10 (30 June 2013)

It's a truism that there's no accounting for taste, but the fact that this backed-up sewage could get a higher rating than the flawed but several-orders-of-magnitude superior Deep Impact really stretches that point. Of course, there are people who think Two and a Half Men is funnier than the the late lamented 30 Rock, so go figure.
Sad to say, it's films like this that give popcorn blockbusters a bad name: screechy, empty, stupid. I don't mind checking my brain at the door of the local cineplex for a couple of hours, but I do mind when it's clear the screenwriters checked their brains even before they sat down at their Macs. That's probably a prerequisite for anyone who works with "director" Michael Bay, whose idea of entertainment is to trap the audience's collective head inside the cinematic equivalent of a pinball machine and then proceed to batter it into a coma. I guess that's someone's idea of good time. Hey, if you're that someone, knock yourself out, or rather have Bay do the job for you. It's part of his contract.
Like most Bay atrocities, this damn thing is excruciating to watch. I found myself gripping the armrests of my seat,not because of the growing suspense unfolding on the screen but because of the sheer cynical crassness of the whole enterprise. There are the mechanically orchestrated "beats," the paint-by-numbers characters, the flat dialogue, the cheesy jokes. Oh, well, at least one of the writers, J.J. Abrams, went on to do really great, imaginative stuff, so put this down to someone just looking for a nice fat paycheck. Which he got.
Yeah, the special effects were OK, and if I were still 5, that would probably be enough. But it's not because I have this problem: I grew up. Clearly that's a problem that Michael Bay and the overtestosteroned, arrested-development demographic this crapfest is marketed to will never have to worry about.