Warbirds - L'isola della paura

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.

Being a masochist I continue to watch the crud the SciFi pumps out but this one may have been too much even for me. Plot holes the size of the Grand Canyon and factual errors so huge show that you do not need talent or imagination to write for SciFi. The monsters in this are actually a few steps above the usual basement quality effects they churn out but other than that there is NOTHING to recommend this movie. Script and acting are so bad I'm surprised the actors used their real names. Once again the SciFi channel has made me appreciate a film like 'They Saved Hitler's Brain' and perhaps someday they will be able to rise to that level if they put more effort into the project. Obviously written in one afternoon by people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a word processor.If the founding fathers had seen this coming they might well have lost the Revolution.

Not so with this one. It's just painfully bad. Brian Krause is the best actor in this dog and that's really saying something. Something not at all good.

The premise promises plenty of laughs (WWII airwomen and soldiers stranded on an island of killer dinosaurs and Japanese soldiers), but the writing takes itself entirely too seriously, as do the painfully, painfully bad actors. The woman who plays the skipper is beyond dreadful. Whoever approved this POS really needs to reevaluate their career. Seriously. I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of Scifi original movie cheese and even I couldn't stand this thing.

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?

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.