by Kroze Kresky, Media Editor

As a little kid playing with your action figures, I am sure you had such epic mystical bouts between two unlikely factions… Ninjas vs. the WWF (What is with this WWE bullshit nowadays?), Power Rangers vs. Gobots, Dinosaurs vs. your sister’s barbie dolls which you did totally not borrow to film a complete version of the plot to Dragon Warrior IV with and then had the VHS tape completely fuck up so it was all for naught… but one of the most famous combination that many kids growing up (including yours truly) was putting all your alien monsters against your cowboy figures riding around on horses. It seemed that Hollywood had tapped into their inner child recently for inspiration for their newest hot summer action blockbuster feature film, but they left the most important ingredient back buried in their toybox… Fun.

Cowboys & Aliens centers around Jake Lonergan (played with no emotion and lots of bordem by the normally awesome Daniel Craig) as he finds himself randomly in the desert with no memory at all of who he is and how he got there. The only clue he has is the wierd metal braclet that is mysteriously shackled to him that he can’t get off. Trying to regain his memories (After killing several random red shirt cowboys and taking their clothes), he makes his way to the nearest town only to discover he is a wanted man for killing several men and stealing gold from the seemingly mustache twirling, hilariously named Woodrow Dolarhyde (played by Harrison Ford who is REALLY showing his age). Upon being captured by the Sheriff and about to be taken away, aliens show up and decide to attack the small town capturing people…. FOR NO EXPLAINED REASON WHATSOEVER. From this point on the movie decides to forget every character’s personality it had previously spent the last 20 minutes setting up and throwing it all to the wind as Jake and Woodrow put a group together to go hunt down the aliens to rescue their people.

Stuff just happens in this movie randomly… as long as it has something to do with cowboys or aliens, stuff is just thrown in the mix with no rhyme or reason and little has any affect on the plot at all. A group of Indians? Sure! A surviving member of another alien race that is revealed half way through the film? Why not? An overturned giant luxury ship in the middle of a desert miles away from any river or ocean when none of the alien ships in the movie are big enough to move something that big that far? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN LOGIC IN OUR BIG STINKIN MOVIE!! The worst part are the seriously glaring plot holes in the movie. The alien designs while different serve no practical use whatsoever and the logic on how to kill them changes more than the mind of a fat kid trying to decide which chocolate bar to buy in a candy shop. This film is more inconsistent with its plot than Marvel’s 40+ year continuity and just as convoluted (This film even gets it’s own version of Jean Grey/Phoenix!).

None of this would be a problem if Cowboys & Aliens was fun to watch or even lighthearted which you’d expect a film that has the ridiculous concept of putting aliens and cowboys together in a movie to duke it out would be. Sadly the movie takes itself and the conflict taking place way too seriously draining the chances the audience could squeeze any amount of enjoyment from it. The film is very dark for the most part, and I don’t mean gritty. A lot of the film’s action takes place during the nighttime with bad lighting in the scenes not allowing audiences to make out cowboys from aliens during the battles thus ruining one of the film’s main selling points. Not to mention the pacing of the film altogether is very poor that despite its sub 2 hour runtime, you will be constantly looking to your watch as the film plods on to its disappointing conclusion that just like everything else in the film, makes no sense of any kind.

The cast seems to realize how much of a bomb this movie will be as none of them put in an ounce of effort in an attempt to rise above the material they had to work with. Craig seems bored with the generic lines he is given to deliver and Ford phones in his entire performance. Clancy Brown delivers a solid performance for how little screen time his character has but has seemed to make a career out of dying on screen time and time again. Olivia Wilde is there just to look hot but even then this movie does a lackluster job of showing that off. Despite her ending up without any clothes on for a scene, its barely for 2 minutes and we don’t get even a sideboob for our troubles! None of the characters are worth caring about and when characters die or have their shining moments, your biggest reaction when they happen is a yawn.

The CGI and sound effects are at least above average and when explosions start happening, they do catch your attention (At least more than anything else in the film.). The CGI alien spider-like ships are really intricate and sleek looking despite being ripped right out of the Will Smith vehicle Wild Wild West. The aliens themselves, while pretty silly looking, are very well animated when seen during the daytime sequences (Which hardly happens).

If we were to just go by the cast and crew for the Ron Howard produced, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof written, and Jon Favreau directed film starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Oliva Wilde, you would think that you are in for a hell of a treat but despite the pedigree Cowboys & Aliens falls short in every possible way. At the very least, the film delivers on the promise of it’s title… it gives us cowboys and it gives us aliens… if only the film was called “Cowboys, Aliens and Plot”, it might have actually been a good movie!

ComicsOnline gives Cowboys & Aliens 1 and 1/2 much needed memory wipes to make us forget that we wasted two hours watching this movie out of 5!

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