Director: Martin Owen
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi; Action Comedy
Plot:
Attempting to finish her favorite video game, a teenage gamer sneaks away from her father's overbearing control and sets up a new session to get past the last levels of the game. When a freak accident brings her into the very game and causes her to become one of the characters, she finds herself playing the game while her friend tries to guide her through the situations alongside the other characters in the game. As they realize that they have to finish the game to get her out into the real world, a deadly struggle causes the difficulty of the mission to increase and puts everyone in jeopardy.
Review:
This was a rather disappointing and underwhelming genre effort. Among its' more enjoyable elements is the generally enjoyable layout of the game and how it's played with the engaging and energetic lead player. An adept fighter with the skills required to handle himself in the game scenario, a quippy attitude that makes for a nice touch of comedic timing as well as some appropriately sinister villains to root against as their agenda unfurls throughout the film, the setup about how she becomes involved in their lives and plays through the scenario as a member of the group is an enjoyable one. It promises some decent action scenes as the crew manages to fight their way through the hordes of henchmen sent to stop them throughout the ship and into the adjacent prison where the big hand-to-hand fights keep this one quite enjoyable for the most part. On top of the incredibly effective retro vibe on display, ranging from the neon color-scheme and filters to their costuming and feel while playing, there are some worthwhile elements on display here.
That said, there are quite a few flaws featured throughout here. Most of this comes from a wholly underwritten storyline that tends to ignore a lot of common sense for an adventure-packed scenario. Ignoring how the whole concept of how she gets into the game, which is such a hokey premise it probably should've been given a second pass to realize who stupid the idea actually is, the very fact that she not only manages to remain a self-aware entity who can communicate to her friend playing the game for her to get back to reality is quite hard to swallow. On top of that, the films' obvious limitations with the budget are apparent at the worst moments, from the simplistic sets and goofy costumes to the generally unremarkable action scenes as despite the quantity on display the quality is kept to a minimum. However, it's easily the fact that most of the expansive action scenes within the video game being resorted to watching them as cut-scenes on TV in the real world that signals the most obvious hint that it wasn't all that grand.
However, an undervalued aspect of the film that gets overlooked is the fact that it's mostly just nostalgia-bait for early-incarnation video game players rather than anything else. The idea of sitting down and playing a video game for hours on end until you beat the one level that's been unpassable tends to be the most obvious ploy to get viewers into the film based on her relationship with her father who's trying to get her to put the game down and do something else with her life, but for viewers with no sense of fondness or even interest in that mentality will find this one quite quickly losing its charm. Rather than doing anything interesting with what is essentially a cliché by this point anyway, it trudges along trying to get something out of viewers but it's all in vain for those who have neither of those aspects attached to video games. Again, it causes the film to wear out its welcome rather quickly and feel overlong as a result.
Overview: *.5/5
While there might be some fun to be had with this effort while in the right mindset, the fact that so much of this is just oddly constructed, makes no sense and feels more of a groan-inducing experience than anything else. Those who can appreciate this kind of silly, cheesy genre experience or a fan of the creative crew might be interested here but done with caution, while most others will be pretty turned off at what's going on.
Comments
Post a Comment