Pacific Rim: Uprising

The Joxer Film Review of Pacific Rim: Uprising.

The follow up to the successful film 2013 by Guillermo Del Toro and directed by Stephen DeKnight with Del Toro as producer, Pacific Rim: Uprising stars [and co-produced by] John Boyega with Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Jing Tian, Adria Arjona, Zhang Jin with Bran Gorman, Rinko Kikuchi and Charlie Day reprising their roles from the first Pacific Rim film.

Set 10 years after the first film, we find the son of the Kaiju War hero “Stacker” Pentecost as a scrapyard scavenger selling remnants of Jaeger robots to backstreet dealers and being a general waste of space, until he is caught by the local authorities after trying to rob one to many artefacts.

He is not alone though, for during all this he manages to drag teenage Jaeger enthusiast Amara Namani [Cailee Spaeny] into his mess as well. It ends up with both of them being carted off to a Jaeger training camp [you keeping up with this?] with Pentecost as an instructor and Namani as one of his apprentices.

The head of this little ensemble is Nate Lambert [Eastwood] who looks good and grumbles a lot, which the ladies in the film like apparently, for we must have the women swooning at the pretty boys.Lambert was Pentecost’s Jaeger partner before they fell out but now they have to put differences aside when a rogue Jaeger attacks a city and the other universe baddies “precursors” are found to be behind the attack, but who is really to blame..?

With all the charm of a Theresa May interview and with all the grace of a herd of elephants river-dancing and the emphasis on “bigger is better” , something that gets mentioned often during the film in case you don’t realise it as your brain seeps out of your ears, this film is a big budget B-movie with the B standing for bland, boring and boorish with booms and bangs all over the place.The dialogue between the cast is as cliched as they come and will have you cringing in your cinema seats, for not even the usually charming John Boyega can save this from the depths of despair that this film hurtles you in to.

A poor mans mash-up of Power Rangers meets Godzilla, the CGI looks like it belongs in a 1990’s childrens tv show and was designed by a 12 year old in their parents basement and looks woefully dated at times.

I could feel my IQ lowering as the film dragged on and drool forming on the side of my mouth as I succumbed to the moronic movie madness that unfolded in front of me.

Scott Eastwood makes an early candidate for next years Razzie award for worst actor. He looks like Clint, he sounds like Clint but he can’t act like Clint that’s for sure. He has all the charisma of a comatose caterpillar and drags the film to a level of drivel that I didn’t think was possible.

This mind-numbingly naff film does have it’s moments even if they are few and far between.The actresses in the film try their hardest to keep the film afloat but with the boys being boys throughout the film it becomes a losing battle, not even a Jaeger can save them from this one.

There is a scene in the film near the end where Pentecost turns to Namani and says “this was supposed to be epic but it wasn’t as good as it was meant to be” and that in one sentence sums up this film completely..

oh, Queen fans, watch out the homage to the News of the World album cover near the beginning of the film.

This Jaeger bombs big time..

Joxer Film Rating

4/10

** stars

 

Advertisement