This couldn't be funnier, even if it had intended to be. It is a 21st century rendition of those awful 1950s drive-in fodder, supersized radioactive insect movies. It just doesn't know its a parody. It really thinks it's a serious movie. As a result, it has turned out much funnier than Date Movie, Epic Movie and Scary Movie, all the uninspired clones of the Zucker brothers' wonderfully screwy Airplane (Flying High down under) and Naked Gun flicks.
Great sets, nice photography but the praise stops there. The script is stupid and the acting is atrocious. Grab snacks and laugh your head off. Lucy Lawless is a scientist battling swarms of carnivorous locust, a CYA secretary of agriculture and an army general eager to gas the bugs and most of America. All are of about equal intelligence. Well, maybe collectively the grasshoppers are smarter. Remarkable, given they are all stick-on props and CGI.
BTW, the unintentional humour is so raucous I never pegged Xena until I came to IMDb. She isn't nearly so visually arresting out of leather. Her estranged boyfriend though, another scientist, is another matter. He could push this flick over with specialized audience niches. It was guffaw time for me when he walked into Command Central and was introduced as a leader in some sort of scientific field. Square jawed, wavy haired and such a caricature of handsome, you know he must have just come straight from his other job. As an underwear model.
Low moments but big laughs: Every time Lucy jumps up and down like an 11-year-old trying to get the attention of a doubting bigwig. When the biggest mid-script plot turn is the "reveal" that Lucy is pregnant. Prime moment for a line something like, "You remember that night. You came straight home after shooting the g-string commercials and you were unstoppable." No matter; viewers are already laughing so hard they'd have missed the line.
Oh yes, and those amazing CGI effects! Really love the computer simulations of the USA at Command Central where the dark swarms of dots (representing the locusts, ya know) spread across several states as fast as spilled water covers a granite counter top.
Enough already. You get it. Do NOT approach this as serious entertainment.
Oh, I forgot. There is one good performance. It's Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicutt on M*A*S*H) as a man outstanding in his field. You got it; a farmer. That's cuz the locusts attack all the crops in Midwestern America. Those good, honest folk don't deserve such diss.
Great sets, nice photography but the praise stops there. The script is stupid and the acting is atrocious. Grab snacks and laugh your head off. Lucy Lawless is a scientist battling swarms of carnivorous locust, a CYA secretary of agriculture and an army general eager to gas the bugs and most of America. All are of about equal intelligence. Well, maybe collectively the grasshoppers are smarter. Remarkable, given they are all stick-on props and CGI.
BTW, the unintentional humour is so raucous I never pegged Xena until I came to IMDb. She isn't nearly so visually arresting out of leather. Her estranged boyfriend though, another scientist, is another matter. He could push this flick over with specialized audience niches. It was guffaw time for me when he walked into Command Central and was introduced as a leader in some sort of scientific field. Square jawed, wavy haired and such a caricature of handsome, you know he must have just come straight from his other job. As an underwear model.
Low moments but big laughs: Every time Lucy jumps up and down like an 11-year-old trying to get the attention of a doubting bigwig. When the biggest mid-script plot turn is the "reveal" that Lucy is pregnant. Prime moment for a line something like, "You remember that night. You came straight home after shooting the g-string commercials and you were unstoppable." No matter; viewers are already laughing so hard they'd have missed the line.
Oh yes, and those amazing CGI effects! Really love the computer simulations of the USA at Command Central where the dark swarms of dots (representing the locusts, ya know) spread across several states as fast as spilled water covers a granite counter top.
Enough already. You get it. Do NOT approach this as serious entertainment.
Oh, I forgot. There is one good performance. It's Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicutt on M*A*S*H) as a man outstanding in his field. You got it; a farmer. That's cuz the locusts attack all the crops in Midwestern America. Those good, honest folk don't deserve such diss.