Pan

Pan was one of those movies. You know the ones? The ones that are so bad they are almost good? Yeah, that was Pan. Unfortunately, I don't see it becoming a cult classic like so many other movies that fit in that category. Still, I got at least some enjoyment out of the movie, and great enjoyment out of mocking it later. 

Several things combine to make this a bad movie. First, the actor playing Hook (Garrett Hedlund) was terrible. He screamed all his lines, and completely over-acted the entire thing. He had some terrible lines, such as his introduction in the movie, "I don't care about you and I don't have your back." But even when the writing is not to blame, he just can't act naturally. I felt like I was watching a middle school performance or something. 

Also, Captain James Hook is supposed to be the very essence of a pirate. Exactly what you think of when you think "pirate." So why did this movie disguise him as a cowboy? 

Then there was the fact that the whole story made no sense. I mean, there's a prophesy that a flying kid is going to come and lead the rebellion against Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), so when Blackbeard has a flying kid unconscious in a territory he rules with an iron fist, instead of putting a bullet to his brain, he nourishes him back to health, and then tells him the prophesy, setting in motion the rebellion. 

This continues from beginning to end, when Peter (Levi Miller) rescues all the lost boys and returns them to an orphanage, and then re-kidnaps them in the middle of the night. Why return them to the orphanage at all? Why not just take them to Lost Boy land straight from the mines? 

Where they really lost me, however, was when the ship landed in neverland. The movie takes place in the 1940s in war-torn England. However, when they get to Neverland, everyone sings Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit in a kind of dirgey voice. The newly arrived boys from 1945 know the words and are able to sing along. I don't mind some slight anachronisms, but this was just too much for me. 

All told, this movie was bad. It was terrible. It was so bad it was almost good, but it fell short of that, too. C-. 

Earth To Echo

Earth to Echo is something resembling a coming of age story with a sci-fi background. These kids, who have always been nobodies help an alien to assemble a spaceship and take off. Along the way they run into the usual assortment of characters that make their lives more difficult. Stereotypically, all the adults are bad guys who want to stop the alien from leaving Earth. These adults chase down the kids, and want to use their rapport with the alien to make it trust them before they can shut it down. Having all the adults be negative characters really rubbed me the wrong way, and I couldn't enjoy the movie.

The worst thing about this movie is that it was shot Blair Witch style with video cameras being a part of the scene, and when the characters run, the video cameras run and bounce all over the place. It really left me feeling nauseous. My stomach and eyes are still upset.  One of the characters is obsessed with getting a video that will go youtube-viral, and the others comment on this obsession and the presence of video cameras a few times.

Another major problem is that I was bored. The characters seemed to be saying things that kids say. Nothing seemed particularly out of character, but a lot of the dialog was just boring. For instance, as shown in the clip at the top of this review, one of the characters scares another by jumping on his shoulders. The boy responds by jumping and saying, "you'll give me a heart attack one day," which strikes me as the most stereotypical response you could possibly have at that moment and seems wasted in a film.

I think they tried to put suspense into the film by having the adult character try to stop them from building a spaceship but it didn't really work. At no point in the film did I wonder whether this spaceship was going to be built. Clearly they just had to get there through a lot of banter and boring writing.

Overall I give it a C-. At least it tried.