In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

capsule : not as bad a sequel as crow 2 or batman & robin , but still horribly putrid , cheesy and ill - conceived .
this one belongs in saturday morning cartoons . . .
extended review : you know , about halfway through this movie , i realized that if you hacked out everything except the fight scenes , you 'd have a damn fine 35 minutes or so of flashy , hong kong style martial arts .
beautifully choreographed by robin shou , who also plays liu kang , the fight scenes are both mind - blowing and graceful , acrobatic enough to make olympic gymnasts weep .
this is what made the original so fun , but
unfortunately for the sequel , we are without the frenetic directorial style of paul anderson .
instead , they got john r .
leonetti , the cinematographer for the original mortal kombat . not a good choice .
while the fight scenes are brutal and eye - popping , the rest of the movie looks like standard made for tv fare .
the acting is sub - par , which i could endure if it were not for a . )
the director 's style , b . )
the special effects , & c . )
the treatment of the story and characters .
a . )
mr .
leonetti should go back to lighting , in my opinion .
i could say dozens of bad things about him :
he way overuses slow - motion
, he has no eye for action , he ca n't get even mediocre performances out of actors , and so on .
but by far his worst move was the way he treated jumping .
apparantly , everybody can now fly .
hell , i 'm all for the occaisional gravity defying flip kick and whatnot , but not when it happens every few minutes , and is done so poorly .
better jumping and acrobatics has been seen in xena : warrior princess .
in short , they should have gotten paul anderson back .
or at least let robin shou direct . . .
b . )
unlike the first one , whose sfx were vibrant and somewhat realistic , mk : a 's special effects are bland , fake looking , and overall just plain bad
.
i counted at least half a dozen times that blue - screening was painfully obvious .
had this movie been made in the 80 's , it would have been ground - breaking .
but in today 's industry , it does n't even look finished .
c . )
now for
the _ really _ bad parts .
i admit , i 'm an avid fan of the mortal kombat series .
the games are amusing diversions , an easy way to work off stress and anger .
the first movie was a mindlessly fun thrillride .
this could have been a really cool movie .
it is n't .
the writers apparantly deemed it necessary to lower the target audience from teens to preschoolers .
some of the plot elements are just plain stupid .
how stupid ?
take , for instance , how our heroes move around .
they use giants spheres the roll around underground , supposedly at thousands of miles per hour . . .
oh boy . . .
even worse is the treatment of secondary characters .
blink and you 'll miss 'em .
most characters had more depth in the video games .
if you thought batman & robin was bad about this , you ai n't seen nothin' yet .
a good 75 % of the characters are introduced , kick somebody around a bit , then either die or are forgotten about .
there 's no explanation at all for this .
and for the final blasphemy , the fight that all the fans were waiting rabidly for , the fight hyped to be the most intricate of the movie , lasted about 3 minutes and then just sort of . . . ended .
it almost made me weep . to sum it all up , rent it on video , and fast - forward through everything except the fight scenes .
N

ever watch a very young child try and tell a joke that is beyond his , or her , sophistication ?
it 's full of stops and starts and usually , the punch line is ruined .
i felt the same way watching drowning mona .
skip a stone across water and you approximate the depth of this attempt at an ensemble comedy .
there are some slightly successful attempts at humor , but they only serve as window dressing .
there is a running gag about the town , verplanck , n .
y .
, being a test town for the then new yugo .
everyone drives a yugo , differentiating their cars with personalized license plates .
even the police chief drives one .
there is a certain sublimeness to the image of a lights and siren decked out yugo skittering its way through the town streets .
there also is a running gag about one of the characters , jeff , missing a hand and how it occurred .
it pokes gentle fun at the notion of urban legends .
it turns out the truth is more horrifying than any legend .
there are some sight gags that pop up as well , such as mona 's tombstone , which reads " demoted " , instead of devoted .
still , the core of the story maintains the flatness of a still pond .
the lynchpin of the film falls on the redundant and sporadic scenes involving mona ( midler ) .
each scene with her is the same : scream at someone , hit someone , then scream some more .
there 's no uniqueness or modulation to her or explanation for her meanness .
anyone off the street could have played the role , such as it is .
the other characters are walking cardboard cutouts .
each one is defined by one trait and no further attempt is made at deeper characterization .
there is a burly , female car mechanic , so of course , there is a forced lesbianism gag .
mona 's son , jeff ( marcus thomas ) is a simpleton , hence
you can predict his dialogue before it even plods its way from his mouth .
chief of police rash ( devito ) likes broadway musicals and loves his daughter .
there 's nothing more to him .
elle , the chief 's daughter ( campbell ) , is bland personified , a dutiful girl with no higher aspiration than to have a child and be married .
mona 's husband phil ( fichtner ) jeckle and hydes from shirking coward to reptilian letch .
bob ( affleck ) , elle 's betrothed , and business partner to jeff , is a mumbling , obvious dullard .
there is no contrast to any of the characters .
by having at least one character with some wit , or wits , to serve as counterpoint to the others , perhaps steinfeld 's attempt at satirizing a small town infested with ambitionless people might have come off better .
ostensibly a murder mystery , drowning mona gives you almost all the clues immediately , then lets you sit back and feel superior as you watch the cast of paper people fumble their way to finding the killer , who could be anyone due to mona 's loving manner with everyone on town .
even that aspect of the film fails , throwing in a convenient , ridiculous and unsatisfying wrap to things .
it 's been a while since i walked away from a movie theater in an angry mood .
what makes it all the more remarkable is that i rarely remember a comedy making me so angry for wasting my time at it 's ineptitude .
N

to watch ' battlefield earth ' is to wallow in misery .
it is one of the most ludicrously conceived efforts in recent history .
it has a clumsily told story , insipid dialogue , shallow characterizations , ugly scene transitions , no evidence of dramatic arc , headache - inducing sound effects , and a resolution that is completely implausible
.
worse , there 's the promise of a sequel .
why ? ! save your money .
some films go quickly to video .
this one , however , should go straight to the sci - fi channel 's ' mystery science theatre . '
in the year 3000 , man has become an endangered species .
most of humanity ( called ? man - animals ' ) was destroyed generations ago in a battle against a race of plundering aliens ( called psychlos ) .
survivors have either taken up shelter in caves or were enslaved to mine earth 's resources for the rest of their lives .
the aliens are a menacing looking humanoid species that stand nine - feet tall , who resemble inbred klingons .
dimwitted as they are tall , their culture is predicated on power , extortion , and getting ? leverage . '
travolta , the leverage - using star , plays terl , the conniving security chief that oversees the mining facility on earth .
much of the movie is spent showing us examples of terl 's petty machinations .
he routinely employs deception and then punctuates his statements with maniacal laughter .
but one thing is certain ; he hates being stationed on earth .
when the home planet informs him that he will be spending the rest of his life on this planet , he begins to devise his latest plan .
he will select a group of slaves to secretly mine out a gold ore site .
it 's not clear how this benefits terl , except that it makes him richer in a place where he has no use for it .
the scrappy jonnie goodboy tyler ( barry peppers ) is selected as the slave group 's leader .
a psychlo knowledge machine gives him the mining know - how .
but the machine also teaches him other things such as the psychlo language , the principles of our founding fathers , euclidean geometry , and the location of fort knox .
this enlightenment just does n't prepare him for the mining assignment .
it also prepares him to organize and stage a massive revolt against their captors .
' we 're going to blow up their home world , ' he says .
' but first , we need a few more supplies . '
in days , he and his comrades evolve from cave dwelling , loincloth wearing , rat eating slaves to fighter pilots and nuclear weapons experts .
by now , the audience is laughing as maniacally as terl .
the media have been working overtime to let the public know that john travolta 's labor of love is a piece of sci - fi drivel .
numerous journals have called it an ill - conceived idea stemming from blind hubris , arrogance , and poor planning .
and after watching this movie , you 'll wholeheartedly agree .
this is a terrible film that is illogically constructed , tediously acted , and frequently begs the question : why was this ever made ? at a price tag of $ 90 million , this film will be remembered as a gigantic folly , assuredly becoming ' the avengers ' of this summer .
both films were unforgivable and this promises to suffer the same speedy fate and subsequent indignity .
in addition to the universally pejorative reviews , there 's another bizarre element to the ' battlefield ' saga .
this film would never have been made if not for the star power of travolta , who for over a decade , had been trying to persuade studios to bring the story to the big screen .
the controversy is that travolta is a scientologist , and ' battlefield ' is based on a 1982 novel by l . ron hubbard , the religion 's late founder .
this led some to believe that ' battlefield earth ' would amount to scientologist dogma , laden with subliminal messages .
but the story is so poorly told that any message , subliminal or otherwise , is totally undetectable .
if the audience got anything out of this film , it was this : we are not too unlike the psychlo leader .
like terl , the audience felt imprisoned , dreaded their situation , and looked for any opportunity to leave .
could that be the scientology message ?
N