Cindy Prascik’s Review of Oblivion

Dearest Blog, yesterday my dear cuz and I headed out to the cinema to check out Tom Cruise's latest flick, Oblivion.

Spoiler level here will be mild.

Future Earth is a wasteland, its few remaining inhabitants charged with safeguarding those resources needed by survivors living off-planet.
Ima be straight with ya, dear Blog, I thought I was gonna love Oblivion. I've been comparing it with Will Smith's upcoming post-Apocalyptic blockbuster, After Earth, and was sure this one would be the winner of the two. Though it's not really a loser, terming Oblivion a winner might be over-reaching.

As you'd expect, Tom Cruise is solid in the lead, Morgan Freeman and my best gal Melissa Leo equally so in lesser roles. Cruise's leading ladies, Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough, are ho-hum and painfully annoying, respectively. Of the remaining supporting cast, all that's worth mentioning is that Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau looks really good.

Oblivion is smart, but slow, sci-fi, and I'll cop to dozing off at least once. I can give full marks for production design, but the other tech was sometimes so laughably awful I wondered how it slipped into such a high-profile blockbuster. For the most part, I think Oblivion is a pretty well done film, but just not one I found all that enjoyable. Or, to sum it up, as we exited the cinema, my cuz' first words were, "Well...I didn't hate it......."

Oblivion clocks in at an excessive 126 minutes and is rated PG13 for "sci-fi action violence, brief strong language, and some sensuality/nudity." I'm so "meh" about it that I fear it may do to After Earth what Cloud Atlas did to Life of Pi, that is, I won't be able to force myself to see the second, the first left me with such a sour taste.

Of a possible nine Weasleys, Oblivion gets five.

Until next time...





...still more technically advanced than Oblivion...

MOVIE REVIEW: OBLIVION

A solitary drone repairman working on a war-ravaged planet Earth becomes humanity's last hope for survival in this ambitious sci-fi epic from Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes producer Peter Chernin. Olga Kurylenko and Morgan Freeman co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko, Morgan Freeman, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Release Date: Apr 19, 2013

Rated PG-13 for nudity, Brief Strong Language, Sci-Fi Action Violence and Some Sensuality

Runtime: 2 hr. 5 min.

Genres: Action/Adventure, Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Review:

You’d be hard pressed to argue that Joseph Kosinski can’t direct a beautiful movie with loads of cool visuals. Both Tron: Legacy and Oblivion are incredibly pretty films but both lack any semblance of emotion or originality. Oblivion takes liberal doses of “inspirations” from a variety of sci-fi classics from the past and even more recent fare. There are moments were the film is nearly in danger of becoming more than the sum of its parts but it just never gets there. There’s plenty to keep you busy and the eye candy on display is occasionally thrilling if terribly familiar. There are plenty of twists and turns in the overly complicated plot. The film would have been better served if the plot were streamlined and avoided some of the more obvious “surprise” turns, some of which are telegraphed as early as the first 10 minutes of the film. Tom Cruise does his usual reliable work but, through no fault of his own, we never feel a connection with his character. Instead it feels like he’s simply driving us through the terrain. Olga Kurylenko, who looks like she’s just had a very sour lemon most of the time and Andrea Riseborough aren’t asked to do much. As a result, the audience is always kept at arms length leaving us thinking about the films that touched on the same subject matter in much better fashion.

C