Warbirds

i can hear the production meeting now: "we've had too many 'people stuck on an island with a monster' movies. how can we freshen it up"? from what must have been the lengthy brainstorming session that followed, here comes the result. i know, let's show women wearing bright red lipstick and put some pomade in their hair. that way, we know we're in the 40's during WW2! here comes sci-fi channel's magnum opus "warbirds". an all-girl flight crew (with a few men along for the ride) are piloting a super secret something-or-other across the pacific when they are attacked by a big bird and forced down on a mysterious island. they meet up with some Japanese soldiers, who are also stranded and attempt to figure out what's hunting them at night and how to escape the island.

This was one of those movies that are made on a cheap budget with bad actors and bad dialogue. My husband and I made some coffee, curled up on the couch, and looked forward to a good movie. Well, what a disappointment!!! We know that the movie 'Killer Tomatoes' was the worst movie ever made ~ well this we voted as the 2nd worst movie ever made!! The acting was appalling, the dialogue was really corny and cheesy, in fact we could have written the script better ourselves. We cannot believe this was only made in 2008 ~ how did it pass as a movie? We have seen better old black and white movies that are still entertaining, but this 2008 movie 'Warbirds' was not entertaining at all. Very weak indeed!

Another in the seemingly endless series of Sci Fi Channel CGI monster movies. If you watch the channel at all, you know the type. A bunch of clichéd characters are stranded in a remote location and menaced by computer generated creatures.

I'll probably hate myself in the morning for saying this, but the effects here were above typical Sci Fi Channel fodder. Which isn't to say that they were convincing. They just didn't look like rejects from a Nintendo game system.

The plot tries to have some social relevance, masquerading as a tale of militarism vs. humanitarianism. That said, the mechanics were often forced. And some of the acting was painful to watch. In all honesty, I may be giving this film a higher score than it deserves, as I didn't see the first half (which means the entire setup and reasoning behind the monster infestation).

But even if I am right, and this wasn't as bad as a many of the channel's previous crimes against humanity, I'm still forced to ask who it is that greenlights such films? What happened to the notion that great Sci Fi meant great ideas instead of ineffective monsters?

The Good: dinosaurs and Japanese Zeros in air-to-air combat! The Bad: SyFy Channel 'zero budget movie-of-the-week'. The Ugly: Bad writing even for SyFy Channel, supporting cast.

The concept is great for an afternoon popcorn flick, and the storyline *in general* didn't require too much suspension of disbelief (no impossible physics, or blatant violations of common-sense science that seem all-too-common in recent movies). However, steps taken to get from plot-point A to plot-point B often made no sense at all. It's as if the script were outlined by a decent writer, then fleshed-out by a 12 year-old.

It's no mega-budget blockbuster, but the effects were actually very good for the budget level. *Everything* was done using cgi and green screens though, including anything with a plane in the shot. The picture is good enough, but the not-quite-right flight physics make the effects rather noticeable (look away from any landings, trust me). It works well for the creatures, not so much for airplanes. 10 minutes of stock footage of WWII planes in flight would have made this film much more enjoyable to watch.

The male and female leads do a good job with what they were given, which wasn't much (some of the dialog was just painful to sit through). Some of the supporting cast, however, made me cringe whenever they had speaking parts. In their defense, they were trying to overcome a script that was even worse than the usual SyFy weekly offering.

Overall, the effects were good for the budget, but not enough to make up for the poor writing or mediocre acting. A tolerable 'fix' for those who crave sci-fi, but a disappointing take on an interesting premise.

Like "Mighty Peking Man", this movie makes no sense, but fails miserably to be boring. Look beyond the baaaaaaaad acting, the immense lapses in logic, and there are some truly comic tidbits to be cherished. The monsters seem to change size at will, the makeup never smears in the tropic heat, and the 40s hairdos a tad stylish for the military, the amazing plane restoration with no parts or tools, no one seems to eat anything, the South Pacific island looks suspiciously like your local park............ I could go on and on, but wait there is one more thing, the lead actor looks like he could take 6th place in a Bill Paxton look-alike contest. Maybe I better end it here before I keel over laughing. - MERK