Warbirds

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

Flying dinosaur creatures, Japanese spy soldiers, American GI guys, pretty W.A.C.'s who are hot shot pilots, a mysterious covert mission; put them all on a remote Pacific island during WWII, and stir vigorously into a broth called Warbirds.

It's a mindlessly fun watch, since the film suffers from Sci-Fi Channelitis. A familiar plot: military fighting a conventional enemy, while ferocious monsters lurk in the shadows, soon jumping out and croaking soldiers from both sides. A lot of jargon is used in this movie: when they're not saying, "Roger that!" or "Over!," they're being insubordinate to a cog-in-the-machine military brass Colonel whose last name is "Inept," or at least it should be.

Why are the creatures there? How many? What are they? Unknown and never explained, but the supply of them never runs out. Every time anybody wants to fly a plane, these things swarm out of nowhere. Their CGI design is OK, but far from groundbreaking. They screech loudly while they slash and smash anything they see. The dogfights are hilarious: when one of them is shot, it explodes into a fireball, lol. Since this movie doesn't know if it's a war movie or a monster movie, it has cornball clichés from both. Example: Whenever the opposing soldiers confront one another, guess what flying monster crashes the party at a key moment.

The ending is pretty colorful, but its depiction of what happens is (and I'm putting this nicely) inaccurate.

Plenty of suspension of disbelief is necessary for this movie. A sense of humor for the sublimely nonsensical is also helpful.

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?

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.

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.