That title could also be Cowboys and Clichés. Actually, Clichés and Clichés would be the most accurate.
I was excited to see Cowboys and Aliens, but it made me realize that not every cool comic book should be made into a movie. It plays out as if they didn’t write a script, they just filmed what they saw in the graphic novel. It led me to being extremely annoyed at the end result, since I really wanted to like it.
I guess eventually Harrison Ford had to make a bad movie, and this was it. (I didn’t see that Crystal Skull movie everyone else hated, so maybe it’s his second.) What’s worse is that he’s bad in it. As are Olivia Wilde, Daniel Craig, and especially Sam Rockwell. To say Olivia Wilde was stiff would be a huge understatement. It was like Disney Imagineers created an Olivia Wilde animatronic, à la the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln attraction on Main Street.
The movies goes like this: generic cowboy movie scene, generic cowboy movie scene, generic cowboy movie scene, aliens arrive, oooooooooh, generic alien movie scene, generic alien movie scene, generic cowboy movie scene, generic alien movie scene, generic cowboy movie scene, generic alien movie scene, climactic battle.
The actual story is that aliens have come to Earth in search of gold, because, well, they really like gold. Even though they were undetected and were taking all the gold they wanted, they decided to screw with the cowboys, because if they didn’t there wouldn’t be much of a movie. This makes sense, though, since I’ve always believed that those Cash 4 Gold commercials are produced by aliens.
James Bland (played by Daniel Craig- OK, that’s not his character name, but it was so unremarkable I have no idea what it was in the film, so I choose to call him James Bland, a descriptive term for his performance) escapes from the aliens with one of their weapons. He kills a few people, then when aliens show up he blows up one of their ships with the weapon. He at first is feuding with Han Solo (Harrison Ford- again, I don’t know his character name, so I’ll call him Han Solo), but they unite to take on a common enemy. Along the way they get to see some Native American stereotypes, and eventually use the methods of the Ewoks against the Imperials on Endor to battle the advanced aliens. Of course at the end they rescue all of the humans, a big sacrifice is made, and James Bland rides off into the sunset after redeeming himself.
I did enjoy seeing Sam Rockwell get bullied, because, well, what’s not to like about that? The effects were decent, but nothing spectacular. Olivia Wilde was fun to look at, but that’s about her only use in the film. I expected Will Smith to show up and start flying one of the alien ships to save the Earth, but he’s too busy making another crappy alien movie to appear up in this one. We’re expected to believe that these aliens are smart enough to build a spaceship that travels across the galaxy, but contains a design flaw to where the equivalent of one of their pistols can destroy the entire thing. They also make their version of jet fighters that can be shot down with one blast of the weapon. It seems to me that their alien engineers need to go back to the drawing board on those things.
I recently beat the video game Red Dead Redemption, and the character development, story, and acting in that were all far better than anything in Cowboys and Aliens. If they made a good movie, I wouldn’t be able to say that about a video game in comparison.
Instead of watching Cowboys and Aliens, go rent The Cowboys and Aliens, and set them up on two TVs next to one another and watch both at the same time. That will almost assuredly be a better entertainment experience.
I’ll rate this movie on a scale of Adjusted Average Marking for pro rodeo bulls with more than 5 outs. I don’t know what that means, but it goes from 81 Dillinger, with a score of 23.444 ranking 1st, to 447 Hootie, with a score of 21.681 ranking 500th. This movie is about a 513 Crackalackin, with a score of 21.771 raking 408th. I wish the screenwriter had gotten Crackalackin with his computer and cranked out a draft with something I hadn’t seen in a bunch of other movies.