Post Your Tomb Raider Review

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I saw the 1:45 screening at the Parkway Pointe 8 in Springfield, Illinois.

Plot: Weird and convoluted. D+
Acting:Everybody except Angelina Jolie and John Voigt were bit actors. Voigt has had better material, but did the best he could with it. Jolie fit the role perfectly and delivered what was expected of her- a perfect mix of cockiness, gentility, wit and intelligence. B-
Dialogue: Hokey and stilted. F
T&A: Plenty of T, no A. B
Action: Took a while to get going, but once it got going it was virtually non-stop. A+
Special F/X: Plenty of explosions but otherwise rather ho-hum by today’s standards. C+

All things considered, I give it a C.

2

We went to see it tonight. I thought it kicked ass. I totally enjoyed the action scenes, Angelina Jolie was awesome, the whole thing just rocked. Yeah, other than Lara Croft, the other characters were totally undeveloped, but I didn’t care. It’s one of the best action films I’ve seen in a while. Sure, it’s no “Raiders Of The Lost Ark,” but what is?

I give it an A.

3

I couldn’t get her to climb up on that shelf in the cave.

My hand-eye co-ordination ain’t what it used to be, so I couldn’t get her to roll and jump.

The graphics were nice.

Oh, you mean the movie. Didn’t see it.

4

I liked the movie, but I am a Hollywood Whore. I like any movie with a budget over 50 million bucks. :slight_smile:

AJ was great in the movie, as was her dad. Gotta give props to her butler and Techy Nerdy Guy [sub]tm[/sub].

[sub]Even Battlefield Earth[/sub]

5

I just saw the movie a few hours ago.

I loved it!

It might have just been that I set my expectations really low, or some Pavlov-ish(?) association thing having to do with the fact that I saw it on the last day of school, but, despite at least 9 cases of blatant product placement (I counted), I thought it was an excellent transition from the game…I was expecting another Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. (shudder) It actually had a fairly good plot IMHO (for a video game movie) and okay special effects. Compared to what I was expecting, I loved it. Plus it had boobies. And big guns.

I don’t know about you, but I (i.e. the 12-18 year old demographic) loved the movie.

6

I thought it was a complete piece of crap.

Angelina(look at my breasts!) Jolie, who can act, decided to just phone it in. Not that she had any material to work with. Everybody else overacted as much as they possible could.

Trite plot? Hey, did everbody know Laura’s father??? Ancient people split this time device and hide the pieces at different ends of the world to protect time itself, but Angelina(bodacious ta-tas!) Jolie can just shoot it and gone. And they could make stone statues come to life!

And hey, could we get some more shots of her breasts? I mean, their walking(and sled-dogging) in a frozen tundra and has her coat open to better display her rack while everybody else pretends to be freezing.

Bad writing, bad acting, bad direction and Angelina Jolie’s breasts.

I feel robbed.

7

I was smart: I saw a matinee. I found it predictable, and thought Angelina did pretty much phone it in. A lot of wasted potential in what could have been a kick-ass movie with a kick-ass heroine.

I did like Daniel Craig, though. lustful grin

8

all in all, i think it was a great movie.
example one: AJ going down stairs in mansion, great shot.
example two: AJ running, multiple scenes, awesome!
example three: AJ getting out of the shower, this alone was worth my eight bucks.
oh, the plot? wasn’t paying attention…
one thing i didn’t like was the fight in the garage. i was so worried that they were going to hurt one of those beautiful cars. then they did…

9

It’s not the kind of film I’d normally watch, but I love the video game. I went in expecting to get an action-packed couple of hours of explosions, guns and action. That’s what I got. Knowing I wasn’t going in to see Ran or Fargo, I was entertained for a couple of hours.

Comparing Tomb Raider to all of the films I’ve seen in my life, as a quality product with a good script, good acting, etc., I’d give it a D. Rating it based on what it promised and what it delivered, I’d give it a sold B.

Too bad I didn’t take the Nude Raider patch to the cinema.

10

My best friend and I went to see it, and found ourselves MSTing the movie while we watched. Never a good sign.

We see the mansion and its lush interiors.

Ah, Lara’s father must have been one of those billionaire-archaeologists we’re always hearing about.

Lara tells her butler, “It’s the 15th. Never a good day.”

My ex-girlfriend always bitched about her period too.

The Illuminati and their goons were pulling down a giant statue blocking their way into the Cambodian temple where the first piece of the triangle was hidden.

Oh, I get it…they’re Taliban!

We never learned just what that clock was counting down to.

We’re asked to believe ancient civilizations could build fantastic devices and control time, when they couldn’t even keep cholera out of their drinking water.

We have no idea what the Illuminati’s plans for the control of time were, and so no great reason to care whether they achieved their goals. Compare this with Raiders of the Lost Ark: we knew Nazis were evil, and that their getting the Ark would be a Bad Thing. That gave the story necessary tension which was lacking here.

Who was Alex West? What’s his history with Lara, and why should she care that he died with the Illuminati bad guys he was running with?

Why was Lord Croft in the Illuminati, if he’s a good guy?

The guy at the auction who steered Lara toward Manfred: what was his connection to Lara and to the Illuminati? His scene, like almost every scene in the movie between the action set-pieces, ended just at the verge of character development.

The story abandons us on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to start. Only one thing is for sure: Lara Croft has a fine pair of breasts. In the end that may be all the director was trying to say.

11

Well, all I expected to see was acrobatics, breasts, and guns. Everything else was gravy.

This reminds me of all the furor after the Conan movies were made, when everybody got up on their soapboxes and said they were awful movies because of bad acting and writing.

What are these people thinking?

Sure, it’s theoretically possible to create a good movie based on a video game, but until enough people make money off of bad ones, nobody’s going to take the big plunge. Think about westerns or horror movies. Or space travel movies. The first ones were a little stinky. Once they proved popular, more effort was put into making them work, and now we have movies like Silverado or Silence of the Lambs or Battlefield Earth (wait a sec…) or Phantom Menace (hold on… umm…). Anyway. Where was I?

Name half a dozen other movies made from video games. If they’re all good, then yes, it’s surprising that Tomb Raider lacked in the plot/writing/acting department.

12

Difficult to say how AJ’s acting was, since she had no lines. The dialogue was dreadful.

No plot to speak of, and what plot there was had holes in it big enough to drive a pickup truck through.

Pretty cool effects.

All in all, it was like watching someone else play a videogame.

13

Isn’t the Illuminati run by John Corrado? Who played him in the film?

14

Entertaining fluff … but better than I expected.
I could have done with a just a little bit less of Jolie’s posing, but I guess that’s what she was there for.
In the context of the “action-movie-made-from-a-video-game” genre, I’d give it a B+.

15

B O R I N G !

16

1:55. 6/15. Regal cinemas, Sterling Virginia.

Internal monologue commences (no kidding):

*What the fuck are you doing here, man? This is beneath you. It’s not gonna be as cool as Tron. You’re too old for this.

You should leave. The six bucks ain’t important. You could wipe your ass with that and not sweat it. Let it go. Coming here was a mistake. Leave. Leave now. This is mass entertainment at its worst. It cheapens you even to be here. You know what the plot will be like. You know what the characters will be like. This is bad. You haven’t even gone into the theater and you know it’ll be bad. Go through the exit doors, fire up the truck, and go get something to eat. You’ll be better off reading a book, any book, than watching this movie.*

Internal monologue ends.

I stayed. And I was correct. There was nothing here to justify spending an hour forty-five of my life on it. Even the electronica soundtrack wasn’t all that good. Generic synth-pump.

17

My rating? C-.

There was enough Bad Astronomy (I knew I could rely on Phil) to make suspending disbelief difficult. Then there was the bad dialogue, terrible plot and wooden acting. Character development could have been much better (especially the supporting cast, like the butler and techno-geek).

The special effects weren’t bad, but not really all that amazing. In fact, at times, they were poorly executed. (Did anyone else notice that a few of the actors weren’t quite looking at the statues they were fighting?)

Anyway, definitely one that I would have been happier to watch on DVD, rather than spending my $7.50 on it.

18

Stuff jiggles. Stuff blows up.

Honestly, as I said to my wife and BIL as we left the theater (AMC Hoffman Center, 20.40 showing)–
“We could have gotten the same thing if we’d stayed home, rented Gia on VHS, shot off some bottle rockets, and squinted.”

Bad. Bad. Just bad. Even the T&A factor wasn’t enough to make it good.

19

The biggest thing missing from the film that I could see was the lack of good bad guys. I mean, at first she fights a robot (hers), then some mercenaries (but mostly just bounces on her bungee cord), then some statues (could they fall apart any easier?), then disposes of the main villian in like 10 seconds. No good vs. evil thing going. Not even any good Ahnold-type catch phrases.

Oh, also missing was the full frontal nudity of Angelina Jolie that I was praying for.

20

Saw it for $4. Glad I didn’t pay $5.

PLUSES: Great premise.

MINUSES: Choppy editing. Lame dialog. Forgettable villians. Long, boring stretches of nothing. Insufficient T&A.

Motorcycle fu. Bungee fu. Dead dad ghost fu. Half pint of blood. One-half breast (no nipplage).

Joe Rob says pass.