Warbirds (2008 TV Movie)
5/10
W.A.C.'s vs. a whack script
9 August 2009
Flying dinosaur creatures, Japanese spy soldiers, American GI guys, pretty W.A.C.'s who are hot shot pilots, a mysterious covert mission; put them all on a remote Pacific island during WWII, and stir vigorously into a broth called Warbirds.

It's a mindlessly fun watch, since the film suffers from Sci-Fi Channelitis. A familiar plot: military fighting a conventional enemy, while ferocious monsters lurk in the shadows, soon jumping out and croaking soldiers from both sides. A lot of jargon is used in this movie: when they're not saying, "Roger that!" or "Over!," they're being insubordinate to a cog-in-the-machine military brass Colonel whose last name is "Inept," or at least it should be.

Why are the creatures there? How many? What are they? Unknown and never explained, but the supply of them never runs out. Every time anybody wants to fly a plane, these things swarm out of nowhere. Their CGI design is OK, but far from groundbreaking. They screech loudly while they slash and smash anything they see. The dogfights are hilarious: when one of them is shot, it explodes into a fireball, lol. Since this movie doesn't know if it's a war movie or a monster movie, it has cornball clichés from both. Example: Whenever the opposing soldiers confront one another, guess what flying monster crashes the party at a key moment.

The ending is pretty colorful, but its depiction of what happens is (and I'm putting this nicely) inaccurate.

Plenty of suspension of disbelief is necessary for this movie. A sense of humor for the sublimely nonsensical is also helpful.
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