In Your Face

Mind, my friends and I saw the movie based off it's title alone. It's cute, though obvious in it's plot and direction-- you know where the movie is going within the first five minutes. My main contention with the plot is that while it remains tolerably consistent, they never explain a lot of the things behind the characters. An alcoholic father, overworked mother, stressed-out sister... that's a bad family, but aside from the occasional mention from the sister, there's not any resolution. I was also confused as to the scene with the bottles... it seemed pretty random.

The writing is a secondary concern... the kids weren't bad actors, but their script left a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, what could have been a cute niche movie was pushed aside for a single, blah special effect, lame scripting, and a glaringly obvious plot.

This film had such promise!! What a great idea, an underdog paintball team struggling for recognition and personal glory, only to lose it's speed due to bad dialoge, poor editing and a half-written story. The characters in the beginning were interesting, only to lose steam half way through to become one dimensional people sputtering out tired one-liners.

Maybe if they spent some more time on the story and dialoge it would have been a great movie, instead of a almost afterthought effort.

Splat! is uncut crap, and paintball aficionados would do themselves an immense disservice by not watching it. From the generic plot, to all the paintball jargon all the way to the acting that's bad to the point of actually being amusing, all this comes together into a fascinating, faultless file (note that I'm using "faultless" purely for alliteration, because this move is badly flawed). The plot is a standard bully team vs bullied team that makes most Disney movies look engaging by comparison. The protagonist is a paintball nerd with an overbearing sister and a sub-par team that needs to train for an upcoming tournament after losing to a rival team in a bet. And if that wasn't enough, the protagonist's brother is actually nicknamed "Splat"!

The plot is paper-thin, the acting is cheesy, the humor is crude and hit-and-miss, but the music is awesome and extremely fitting to the paintball matches in the films.

The movie In Your Face, aka Splat!, was one of the first paintball movies. In a movie sense however, it was too close to an independent film than a box office. The concept of paintball was brought to life well in this movie, and added a drama suspense to it with characters like The Phantom.

Todd and his 4 close friends enjoy playing paintball, and do so on a daily basis, except that Todd's older sister is too controlling over his free time. When the team play against Ray's team (a bully with an attitude problem), one of their teammates drops, and so they are left with 4. Ray's cousin Kelly decides to join Todd's team to make them a 5 person team again. While practicing, they encounter The Phantom, an anonymous paintball legend who shows them a few tricks. Later on, he joins to become their coach, and helps them train for a local paintball tournament.

7 out of 10. Some shots were well done, and the reality was good. Camera adjustments needed work, but this movie would have made theaters if a veteran directed had worked with it. All paintball players should see this movie.

I actually liked this movie and have seen it several times on DVD. It's fairly well done & features quite a few paintball "celebs" through out the movie. The plot is a fairly simple "good guys vs bad guys" theme but with paintball as it's driving plot. At least they handle the markers & safety aspects of the sport in a correct way. Not for everyone, but for paintball players you'll get a kick out of seeing some familiar names, faces & equipment associated with the sport of paintball in the movie. The acting is fairly well done also with an ending that all who have played tournament PB will enjoy. Good for a winter day when you need a paintball fix but it's too nasty outside to go and play. Rent it and keep an open mind & I think that you'll be pleased with the way our sport was represented as well as the movie as a whole.