Less substance than even Michael Bay can muster

Rating: 4/10 (26 May 2010)

i saw the advanced screening of this last night in Grand Rapids, MI. i have played the game, and, seeing how it is a video game movie, i was trying not to get my hopes too high. the movie starts out great, but it peaks at about 15 minutes or so. and everything was downhill from there. the music was just terrible overall. but the thing that really destroyed this movie was the writing. i mean, i do understand that this is an action movie, and i am not asking for an Oscar winning script here, but just about anything would have been an upgrade from this. everything was beyond cliché, everything seemed to happen very conveniently, and every other line from Jake Gyllenhaal was some witty, comical remark. oh, and there's another thing. it tried waaaay too hard to be funny, so it came out just annoying. not to mention i had "that guy" sitting behind me. we all know "that guy". the one with the worlds worst laugh who finds everything funny. the acting actually wasn't too bad overall. there were no movie saving performances here, but it could have been much worse.
i was debating whether or not to call this movie predictable. i mean, i did predict just about everything that was about to happen, but that's not as much that it was, in essence, predictable, rather it was just boring enough in parts that you could spend 10 minutes at a time day dreaming, thinking about what could be coming next. the movie was free, so at least i can be thankful for that. i would not pay for it, and i will probably not see it again any time soon.