Set up good. Execution, meh.

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2018)

I was excited to finally see this one. I had heard that this movie was chock full of all kind of pop culture references, odes to previous science fiction movies, Steven Spielberg and 80's music all wrapped up in a vitrual reality world. What's not to like? Well, a lot. It's funny that the narrated explanation of the time, place, backstory and plot by the main character that takes place before we see the name of the movie on the screen was more interesting than the stuff afterwards. The movie is too long. The villain is not evil enough. Sure it's fun to see Mega Godzilla, the Martian ship from War of the Worlds, The Iron Giant, and even the Alien explode out of someone's chest all in the same movie, but when the high tech virtual army given orders to prevent you at all costs from getting the three keys and winning the game turns out to be a bumbling band of nit wits seemingly dumber than the Keystone Cops that was a bit of nostalgia unecessary. King Kong was the only character that was scary, and that's another movie altogether. It should have ended after the winning player (our hero) finally meets his idol and mentor and obtains the Easter Egg. It was an emotional scene worthy of a finish, but then we have to sit through another resolution between our hero and the Curator. It probably meant something, but at this point I stopped paying attention. The movie's ending only served the purpose of pushing the film's total run time to about fifteen minutes past the two hour mark, and had a cheesy " there's no place like home" slant to it, but The Wizard if Oz was a better movie.