Great special effects, Horrible editing = Convoluted plot

Rating: 3/10 (24 November 2006)

I waited for this one to come out on the cheap screen, and I wish I had waited another few months for video. If you have little concern for any film-making aspects beyond special effects and action, you'll love this movie. If you care at all about any sense of continuity, plot sequencing, character development, and dialogue, you're going to be grinding your teeth through this movie, essentially a series of 20 minute action scenes strung together by an unnecessarily confusing plot. (and don't tell me that plot, characters etc don't matter in a good action/adventure flick; the first movie had plenty of action, but was an excellent story with good writing). I think the biggest problem was the editing. It seems that to please the audience base, the director chose to keep in all of the action, creating for a very long 2 and 1/2 hours; to keep it from being even longer, key scenes that helped develop the plot/characters were clearly cut.
Incidentally, I went and saw "The Illusionist" after. 2 different genres of course, but the difference between a quality, entertaining, and well-crafted film and a hyped blockbuster couldn't have been any more glaring.
p.s. a pretty dark and violent movie in places, if you're planning on bringing your kids...