A clash of the mediocre...

Rating: 5/10 (15 April 2010)

It wasn't a bad film... it was just forgettable.
Everything about LOTRs that i found a problem, this film managed to cause problems in the opposite direction! The pacing in LOTRs was bad, it lingered on so many scenes it became such a chore to sit through after the first viewing. It also over explained everything with elongated scenes that were in dire need of a trim.
COTT went the other way, jumping from plot point to plot point, occasionally filling in certain gaps with Gemma Arteton giving them all a bedtime story for a few minutes. A film that seemingly could have run for over 2 hours with the plot points it needed to hit ran for less than an hour 50... and in fact I'm glad it was so short because there seemed nothing in this film that blew me away. Nothing new or exciting, nothing with any depth or value that made me care about any of it.
And the 3d... absolutely nothing in it seemed to be enhanced by the 3d at all. I may as well saved a few quid and watched it in 2d, it would have made absolutely no difference in the viewing.
The monsters were good, the CGI was competent and the fight sequences were fine, but all too often they felt a little too familiar, right up to the 'Cloverfield' Kraken towards the end.
Maybe I have just seen too many of these sort of films recently, but there was nothing to offer that gave it a stand out factor, a unique selling point if you will that made it anything beyond a time killer. It speaks volumes for it that one of the best moments was a cheeky little in joke nod to the original 80s film.
Average is all I can say about it, it felt such a let down even though i wasn't as bothered about this as i was other films coming out this year...