Restart the Earth

Well, what a movie.

Not exactly rife with deep philosophical under tones but if you check your brain in at the door and don't aim too high, you should not be overly disappointed.

The story itself is pretty straight forward and is not what I would call taxing. Plants, mad scientists buggering with things they shouldn't be, end of the world, yada, yada, yada.

The staging of the story was, well, nothing flash. The CQI and the set pieces were at best acceptable and at worse ordinary sometimes boarding on the laughable. For example, it was more than noticeable that as the characters were seen traversing the landscape between the high-rise buildings and the cars on the street in some scenes, the definition of the wider horizon of the landscape was decidedly flat in nature indicating an obvious green screen effect. It certainly screamed low budget.

The other part of the staging of the story, the actors, is a different kettle of fish. Some of the acting was fine, some of the acting was more than a little melodramatic and some was just horrible. Case in point on this, the gentleman who played the rotund science tech "21" (and the comedy foil) simply put couldn't act. This criticism maybe harsh though as I watched the Chinese language version with subtitles (I cannot watch dubbed movies) and a lot of his lines obviously lost a lot in translation.

Finally, the child.

This child should win the Oscar for being the single most unwarranted and annoying child character in any movie since Dakota Fanning played Rachel Ferrier in Steven Spielberg's 2005 War of the Worlds. Certainly, as the film progresses and the child becomes progressive more annoying you hope that the plants do the viewers a favor and eat her and by the end of the movie, you are left wondering if the father saved the right person....

As the movie goes, quite the mixed bag but I have seen worse so maybe 6 out of 10.

This movie wasn't too bad, and it was kind of a cool premise for the movie and it was even funny at times. The CGI and post apocalyptical scenery was nice to look at. However, the movie had about 25 minutes of extended Drama scenes that cut have been shortened from 25 minutes of drama to like 2 minutes. So for example if a key character dies, there is no need to spend the next 5 minutes sobbing and remembering the character. My guess is they added in these scenes to take the movie up to a respectable length. So what I recommend is skipping ahead when you come to these obvious dramatic moments. That is what I did and the movie was much much better that way.

There are certain things one expects in Chinese films. Some heavy handed propaganda and some terrible voice actors. This movie has an interesting premise, and could have been done much better. Specially engineered plants have suddenly become sentient, and have taken over the earth, and are feeding on all human and animal life to sustain them. The sets are done well, clearly with CGI, and the plants themselves are done very well, with plant and snake like features, and there is a lot of CGI in this movie. Teams of soldiers are to set out at specific points on the globe, to inject a substance into the roots of the plants to kill them off, and all the many sites must do that at the same time. And we follow one team. But first we meet a man and his daughter. His wife worked developing the plants, and died when they attacked. And he wants to protect his daughter at all costs. The young daughter has the worst possible voice actor and very limited vocabulary and her voice will grate at a person very quickly. A cross between whining and annoying. A team meets up with the father and daughter and slowly, members of the team are killed by the plants. Things start to get very melodramatic, in an excessive manner, which is part of the propaganda with films like this. But the idea is very interesting, as long as one does not ask too many questions. There is a scene with the team and father and daughter in a bus that tells a person those busses can really take a licking.

RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN. Start with an obese comedic tech wize, add a little girl and lots of more than ridiculous characters and situations and what you get is unwatchable. Imagery is straight out ofthe lowest level Japanese films from the age of Godzilla and others. Plot is a joke, characters are also just PC representations. If you enjoyed this excuse for a movie, please go back to your second grade class and refrain from leaving any movie reviews. Movies worth viewing does not include this amatuer attempt to cinema in any way. Pass and go straight to the exit when this "film" enters your radar.

The plants turn against us? The film began in a tedious way. And of course, I knew the film would be about the man trying to survive with his little daughter, as plants growing beating hearts try to swallow them. It looked depressing, slow, annoying, and predictable. Seen on Tubi, the free streaming site, which now has live TV.