Fails to realise the book

Rating: 4/10 (26 March 2014)

First up, I'm a big scifi fan. I've read the book and wasn't a great fan of it. The basic premise was OK but I didn't like the writing style. The film is fairly true to the book but of necessity rushes some very basic parts - principally that Ender is driven to win in every contest he participates in. This is absolutely central to the plot and is skipped over in the film to it's detriment.
The characters appear to come from "my big book of film characters" and have been seen many times. This is not something that Harrison Ford normally does so comes as a surprise. By failing to capture Ender's determination and ability to win under great adversarial conditions during training the film leaves you wondering why they are trusting the defence of the planet to some pre-pubescent kid and falls down accordingly.
The effects are very average being primarily cgi and very obviously so. I honestly expected this film to fall flat and wasn't shocked to find my expectations fulfilled. It's not a horrendous effort but is firmly on my list of films not to watch twice.