Warbirds

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.

I admit this movie isn't very good. The visual effects and the acting are poor. The only thing I really liked about this movie were the female pilots. I like the idea of a group of beautiful female pilots during the second world war. I liked the heroine of the film Maxine West, she is as pretty as she is tough and resourceful.

I also liked the fact that Brian Krause plays an Air Force Colonel. Because the role Brian is most famous for playing Leo in the Charmed TV series. For those of you who haven't watched Charmed, Leo is a whitelighter for the Haliwell sisters in Charmed. Whitelighters are guardian angels for good witches. And Leo was originally a medic for the U.S. army during the Second World War, he was suddenly killed in a battle and in heaven became a whitelighter. So in Warbirds Brian plays another WWII character but this time he plays a soldier.

The flying dinosaurs are scary but aren't very realistic.

While the female pilots do have some action in fighter aircraft. It wasn't as intense as I hoped. So I only recommend Warbirds if you like the idea of seeing tough and pretty women in action. But don't have any good expectations about this movie.

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.

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

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.