Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Movie Reveiew: Solo: A Star Wars Story

Review Written By Michael J. Ruhland










Michael's Movie Grade: C+

Review: This is not a new Star Wars classic by any means, but it is a fun little movie.

One thing that helps carry this movie is simply our main character. Alden Ehrenreich provides a great performance as Han Solo. True no one can take the place of Harrison Ford, but Ehrenreich certainly does a darn good job. He brings a huge amount of likability to this movie as well as a great sense of humor. The jokes here are also often quite enjoyable. It is true that there are some misses but the ones that work made me laugh. Donald Glover also makes an excellent Lando (though he is not given enough to do), brining again a natural charm to the role. I am glad to say that unlike the last two Star Wars movies, the action scenes never seem to drag on too long here. The do their purpose of delivering excitement and then leave before they overstay their welcome. In the previous two movies, the action scenes lasted long after the excitement creating sheer boredom. That to me often made those movies hard to sit through for me. Luckily here, without it overstating its welcome I never feel into that feeling of sheer boredom. Also eliminating boredom is that this movie does not feel pushed to a long length. Again the previous two films if shortened could have been better movies. This movie instead feels like what was here was necessary for the story, and doesn't seem to drag.    

This movie does have a major problem though. There is simply no suspense. Of course with this movie taking place before A New Hope, we know certainly characters will live and seeing their lives threatened has no effect. There is also a lack of any strong villain. Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) simply feels like a typical movie bad guy and offers nothing new or interesting. The movie is also full of clichés that make it easy to see what is coming.

This is by no means a great movie, but it was fun to watch and worth seeing.

-Michael J. Ruhland

No comments:

Post a Comment