Cowboys & Aliens

“Cowboys & Aliens” was one of the most anticipated movies of the summer. With this genre blending blockbuster the name says it all. But unfortunately the movie doesn’t really have much more to say than that. If you want to see cowboys and you want to see aliens you will not be disappointed. But if you were hoping for more then that’s a horse of a different color.

Jon Favreau is a great Hollywood mogul in training. He got his start with a couple great indie movies and stayed in the Hollywood machine long enough to be given a shot at the big show. He’s proved himself time and again to be good at what he does, and he is good and he is reliable, but the bigger he gets the more the work suffers. “Ironman” was great for a superhero movie, but “Ironman 2” was not. Taking his blockbuster chops to another comic book with “Cowboys & Aliens,” the movie going public was just happy to see something come out this year that they perceived as original (this year saw the release of 27 sequels). But originality and novelty only get you so far.

So what’s wrong with this movie? Not much to be honest, but enough that it didn’t live up to its hype. That’s the problem with hyping up these summer movies; if they don’t live up to it then it seems like a failure even if the movie was actually good. That’s the problem with expectations. The story didn’t make a whole lot of sense, or maybe it just didn’t matter. All the special effects were great, and all the big action set pieces were fun to watch. Ultimately there were a few bad characters and a few bad actors to make this a mediocre film. Paul Dano is great. He’s the best actor in the movie, but he’s only in it for five minutes. Contrast that with his “father”, Harrison Ford who was awful. Apparently they made his part bigger when he agreed to do the movie, which was a mistake. Everything about that character and his performance were terrible.

This wasn’t a bad movie, it might actually be a good movie, but it’s not great. No one can say it was Favreau’s fault, it probably wasn’t. And in a summer full of really bad movies this stands out because it wasn’t awful.