emotionless like a stone, purposeless like watering the lawn during the rain.

Rating: 5/10 (16 October 2013)

I want to start out by saying that I am a big admirer of the work that Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman have produced during their renowned careers. These two could team up for a NyQuil commercial and I would seriously consider spending three dollars to rent it on DVD, (I am well aware that people do not rent commercials on DVD, but you get the picture.) However, not even this powerful duo can make this movie stand-out.
I could sit here and talk about the overly simplistic dialog, the tiresome and unoriginal story, the acting, that is adequate at best and the slow pace of this movie, but I think it would be best to express the feeling that this movie creates, rather than listing everything that is wrong with it.
Watching Oblivion is a lot like going out on a date with a girl you kind of know, but never really cared for, and have little interest in getting to know. This is the kind of a date from which you do not expect to find a romantic interest or even an enjoyable company. At most, you expect to spend some money, (because you are after all a gentleman,) and pass the time. You don't have anything else going on that evening and you already promised your friend who has been trying to set you up for months. So, you go, and dine and chat and for a brief moment a thought passes by, "maybe she will be better than I think? Maybe there is something I will learn about her that I will really like. What if my attitude is the problem?" But after the date is over, you prove to yourself what you already knew. It's her. Of course it's her. If only she wasn't so boring, superficial, dull, completely not funny, entertaining or intellectual, but she is.
That girl is Oblivion.
Now, I just want to make a clarification, that this negative mindset is a terrible way to go about meeting new people, seeing new movies and living life in general. I do not practice it and do not recommend it to anyone. However I feel that this example perfectly illustrates my attitude towards this movie.
The main problem with Oblivion is that it evokes zero emotions. I could not help but feel nothing at all towards this picture. No anger, frustration or disappointment. Obviously any positive emotions were out of the window.
Oblivion is futuristic and visually of high-quality, but in a very unexciting kind of a way. There are attempts at action, romance, suspense and purpose in this movie. However, all resemble more of a thought of doing something, instead of actually doing something. The movie is very video game-like, a slow futuristic video game with very few characters and very few things to shoot at. This game is the kind where you need to walk around over barren landscape and try to figure out what happened. At the end of the game you realize that you have played this game before, many times. It just had a different name.
A lot of people really seemed to enjoy Oblivion and claim it to be a great science fiction picture. To each his own, but for my money, the movie Prometheus was similar in genre but heads and shoulders above this film.
Go-ahead and take this girl out, maybe you'll see something in her that others didn't. Just be grounded in your expectations and don't talk about yourself the entire night.