Pacific Rim – movie review

Pacific Rim can easily be described as nothing but Monster/Robot porn. Yes, there’s a plot, and back story, and character development, but those elements are all handled with heavy handed exposition and cliches. I can’t imagine anyone walking out of the theater thinking, “What a richly developed and coherent universe they created.” But I can imagine people thinking, “Really great fights between monsters and robots. Too bad they spent time trying to tell a story around them.”

<RANT>I’ll accept any explanation needed to make the basis for a story. If you need a wormhole thingy in the middle of the Pacific ocean that spews out insanely huge monsters then so be it. If you think humans can respond by building skyscraper sized robots in just a few years then that’s cool too. And as lame as it is I’ll except your need for two pilots for each robot because of the “neural load.” But when a young woman who doesn’t weight 100 pounds wet is holding an open umbrella next to a military transport helicopter while it lands then there’s going to be problems. Call me nit picky if you like but I hate it when I see things like that in movies. If you expect the audience to buy into your very thin premise of a plot then try and back it up with as much realism in every other aspect. Don’t make me also have to buy into the fact that in the universe you created they also have umbrellas that aren’t affected by the wind – which come to think of it would be a miraculous invention.</RANT>

In my opinion the biggest failing of the movie is the lack of humor. But it certainly wasn’t from lack of effort. They tried very hard to inject humor but I only recall one instance that the audience laughed. There were three characters whose sole purpose was to be the comic relief, but the actors just didn’t have any funny dialog to work with.

The hardest thing about grading this movie is that the monster/robot fighting was really awesome. If you’re excited to see the movie solely for that then by all means go see it. You’ll enjoy the movie. But if you’re hoping that there’s a decent story to back it up then you may want to hold off.

I saw the movie in IMAX 3D and found it to be decently done but honestly I forgot that I was seeing it in 3D. I didn’t notice anything that really stood out.

Grade: C-

About The Peetimes: I recommend the second peetime at 57 minutes. It’s plenty long, and you’ll have no problem catching up on the movie when you read the synopsis.

Note: None of the peetimes involve fighting between monsters and robots, or a scene with Ron Perlman.

There are extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Pacific Rim. (What we mean by Anything Extra)

Tags: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Disaster

Movie release date: 2013-07-12

 

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