"Battleship": two-paragraph review

I was in the mood for something loud and stupid, so I watched 2012's "Battleship," directed by Peter Berg and starring a cast as diverse as Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, Liam Neeson (who is, surprisingly, only a minor character), Jesse Plemons, Tadanobu Asano, Sports Illustrated model Brooklyn Decker, and what appears to be a whole complement of World War II veterans who get a magnificent scene together in the final third of the film. The movie's plot takes a long time to spin up, but it's dead simple: the world uses a special satellite to send a signal out to an Earthlike planet in a solar system's "Goldilocks" zone in the Gliese system. One scientist, perhaps echoing Stephen Hawking's pessimism about contacting aliens, mutters that, should the aliens be advanced enough to respond, it'll be like the Europeans coming to the new world, and it is. Years later, in the middle of a huge, international RIMPAC naval exercise, the aliens from Planet G in the Gliese system show up: five large ships that split up, MIRV-like, into smaller ships. Most of these ships land in Earth's oceans; one has the misfortune of landing in the middle of Hong Kong, killing thousands. The ships that land in the ocean deploy what appear to be huge, dome-like shields that sit upon the water's surface, each shield covering thousands of square miles. They also try to hook up with Earth's satellite systems to be able to relay some kind of message back to their home planet. Most of the RIMPAC ships near Hawaii are blocked by a shield (which also covers Hawaii itself); Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Kitsch)'s destroyer, the John Paul Jones, happens to be inside the shield when it goes up. The rest of the movie, which focuses on the Hawaii part of the invasion, is about repelling the alien attack once it's determined that the aliens are hostile. 

As sci-fi movies go, this one may arguably be stupider than "Independence Day," but I generally like director Peter Berg, who is a smarter version of Michael Bay (I've reviewed his "Lone Survivor," "Deepwater Horizon," and "Patriots Day"), and while I thought "Battleship"—inspired by the board game and partly produced by Hasbro Studios—was corny as hell and had plenty of unanswered questions for those of us who think about these things, I also thought the movie hit the spot the way a bag of Doritos might: all empty calories, but strangely satisfying while you're eating it. I also ended up seeing the movie as a sort of fun love letter to American veterans, whom it features in several ways: there's the young, bulky vet who lost his legs in combat and is working through his anger and depression; and there are the old Navy vets who, having been invited to be honored at RIMPAC, are called upon to help revive the old battleship Missouri ("Mighty Mo"), which proves to be the last great hope against the aliens parked by the Hawaiian archipelago. A movie like "Battleship" isn't going to be praised by regular critics, and it's not going to be praised for its plot, its logicality, or its acting, but it is going to be praised for the pace and coherence of its editing, which is spot-on. Any movie that can make big, clunky naval vessels feel light on their feet in slow, ponderous sea battles is all right by me. "Battleship" gets a thumbs-up despite being silly as hell. Nothing about this movie takes itself seriously except for its chef's kiss to America's veterans.