Saturday, January 15, 2011

NFL Playoff Snoozer and SciFi Original Movie Review: Behemoth

At first I thought: the NFL and SciFi Channel need to get on the same page. The NFL Playoffs continued Saturday night with the Atlanta-Green Bay game, at the same time as the long-awaited (by me) SciFi Original Movie "Behemoth," which premiered Saturday at 9.

I debated what to do.  I decided to watch the playoff game live on Saturday, then stay up to watch the rebroadcast of "Behemoth" at 1am.

Ultimately, this night was a serious lose-lose.

The playoff game got off to a promising start.  At 9pm, when "Behemoth" started, Atlanta and Green Bay were tied, 14-14, in a game that featured offensive fireworks, a kickoff return for a touchdown, and all the makings of an epic matchup (which made sense, since the same two teams battled in the regular season to a last-second, 20-17 contest, won by an Atlanta field goal on the final play).

Two hours, later, I was disappointed as Green Bay dominated the rest of the game and beat Atlanta 48-21.  Oh well, I thought, at least I can stay up and watch "Behemoth" at 1am.

Bad move.

I continue to struggle through "Behemoth" as I write this blog.  It's a real snoozer.  Supposedly a monster lurks in a mountain near a small rural town.  I say supposedly because I just got my first hints that the monster exists and we're more than halfway through the movie.  All I know is that the monster has a giant eye and tentacles.  So basically, all signs point to a giant squid living in the mountain, which is just silly.  It also had a young couple (of whom the boyfriend just proposed) dead to rights, trapped on the mountain right in front of it, and somehow our boy Squidley couldn't close the deal.

We also have the usual suspects -- the clueless sheriff who refuses to react to all evidence pointing to a monster, the mysterious government conspiracy, the daughter dating the ne'er-do-well punk against her father's wishes, and the crunchy earthy type who warns of imminent doom but can't get anyone to listen to him.  Oh, and here comes the 10 minutes of exposition from the government conspiracy guy who puts us to sleep while explaining just what the hell is going on.  (Memo to monster movie screenplay writers: just once, write a screenplay without explaining anything about the monster or what it's doing here.  Not only will it be less stupid, but it'll be a scarier movie.)

There are only 45 minutes left; a giant tentacle just showed up and killed the government conspiracy guy (couldn't he have killed the dude before his terminally boring exposition scene?), and now we're back to boredom.  Hopefully the monster will make more than a token appearance before this is all over and I will be able to stay awake. 

But I'm not optimistic. I highly doubt I'll make it to 3am awake.

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