Cowboys & Aliens

I am afraid that the length and content of the script did not exceed the title of the film, which promised a great adventure, and in combination with the talented creative team, ideal popcorn entertainment. The first approximately 15 minutes are divine, Craig is the ultimate tough guy, the canvas shirts smell of sweat, and everyone is carrying their guns low. Then Ford enters the scene, showcasing the most ridiculous toughness in the history of the Wild West, and everything is crowned by an absolutely asexual outfit à la Olivia Wilde's nightgown. The plot takes place in a total of 3 larger locations (with the majority of them being the wasteland of New Mexico), a larger amount of ILM fantasizing, so you can also search for it under a microscope, which raises the question: where did the 163 million from the budget go? From the beginning of the second third, it's perpetually echoing boredom, which this commercial failure fully deserves. The worst blockbuster from approximately 2-3 years ago. (27/01/2012)

Wow! There really isn’t even a pinch of humour. Something like Cowboys and Aliens could never be good this way, even with the greatest genius behind the camera. To make with a serious face a film where a group of cowboys and Indians avert an invasion of aliens that have come to earth to mine gold (oops, spoiler) is mental. If it at least looked good, but no, not even that, it’s just two hours of grey and boredom. Not even the aliens are good! (20/11/2011)

Absolute crap, which was to be expected based on its name. Fortunately, it's quite entertaining and it looks good, and the few one-liners were worth it. The Indians shooting arrows at the space monsters with their bows is definitely the craziest thing that you can see in cinemas this summer, except for maybe The Smurfs. Perfectly corny. But in the end there are plenty of things that aren’t logical, Olivia Wilde is as annoying as the Mexican child, and it is a great pity that the tough Ford turns soft in the last third. Undemanding fun? Undoubtedly. (11/08/2011)

Anyone want a screenwriter? Because Hollywood seems to have a surplus of them. Otherwise, I can't explain why Cowboys & Aliens was written by five people. And why their typewriters produced such a simple result. Nevermind. As you might have guessed, the story is the biggest (and actually the only) weakness of this film. I didn't mind that a bunch of cowboys went on the trail of a UFO just out of the blue, all convinced that "it was going where the machines went". It sounds naive, but that's just how every other thing was handled in the Wild West: Find a clue and follow it. I was more sorry about how the screenwriters botched the dialogue. They did give the tough Craig and the likeable grumpy Ford a few lines, but otherwise most of the dialogue felt heavily used. What I liked, on the other hand, was the effort not to make Cowboys & Aliens into a comedy or even a parody (I guess not enough time has passed since Wild Wild West and the filmmakers are still scared), but a full-fledged sci-fi movie. In this, I think, they succeeded, because the result is more reminiscent of The Valley of Gwangi than the aforementioned Wild Wild West. The dinosaurs may have been replaced by aliens, but no matter what situations the characters get into, you still get the feeling that you're watching a (slightly different) western that is sympathetically lightened by humor here and there and where the action is just right. The special effects are an entirely separate chapter. ILM is simply ILM, and so the alien craft look absolutely superb and irresistibly mechanical, behaving realistically like jet fighters of today, leaving a smoke trail behind them and their engine making a sensational "insect" sound. I was also pleased with the "fish-turtle" look of the aliens and the beautiful (really beautiful, I haven't seen one of those in a long time) final explosion. I also give points to Harry Gregson-Williams, who found a nice listenable compromise between western and sci-fi music, and of course to the director, without whose sense of action (the night raid on the city, the air attack in the desert, the ending) and other (the overnight stay in the boat, the meeting with Jake's gang) scenes it wouldn't have been the same. Four pure stars. (08/12/2011)

Me and Craig have one thing in common, we both look pretty dumb in hats. But he’s a bit tougher than I am, so he can get away with wearing them in public. C&A is a fairly simple piece of idiocy that combines the most mundane from the world of westerns and sci-fi, well there’s a couple of interesting ideas (just what do those aliens want here), but you would expect that with such a horde of screenwriters (and not bad ones at that) they would come up with something really good. And Favreau usually does a much better job, saving the show with some playfulness, a certain detachment and Downey Jr., but he this time didn’t smuggle any of this into the movie. The aliens hide for too long and so we don’t have much of a chance to enjoy them in the first, cowboy-like, more tedious half. On the other hand, they do look great (and they are the only thing that Uncle Spielberg’s fatherly hand added), and maybe there is more to learn about them in the documentaries on the DVD. Gregson’s music works pretty well. The only thing I can give full marks to is the casting, Harrison is trying not to fall off the Jones comeback bandwagon and he does very well. And Olivia... oh my, Olivia, if you don’t drown in her delightful eyes, then her almost see-through dress will definitely get you. And at the end she has her hair in a ponytail... (25/08/2011)