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    The 5th Wave

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    “The 5th Wave” would be a much better film if it could escape its apocalyptic young adult roots. I actually enjoyed the film as it started but once that romance began creeping in, the film got steadily more predictable and cheesy.

    What’s the 5th Wave? It’s an alien attack. It all started when a space ship started orbiting the Earth. A massive global blackout crippled our defenses. Next, our cities were reduced to rubble by earthquakes and tidal waves. A virus came in and whipped out most of the survivors. Now the aliens are among us, picking off the stragglers one by one. When Cassie (Chloë Grace Moretz) becomes separated from her family, she begins a long journey on her own. Setting her sights on a military base where her brother (Zackary Arthur) is stationed, a question remains: When will the 5th Wave hit, and will we survive?

    There’s a lot going on in this film. Cassie is wandering in the woods looking for her brother and we meet several characters along the way (most notably Alex Roe as Evan Walker, a helpful and handsome stranger.) Her brother Sam and several other children (including Nick Robinson as Ben Parish) are in a totally different location getting ready to fight back against the aliens. We’ve got kind of a cross between “The Road”, with Cassie never knowing who she can trust and having to scramble for basic necessities and something akin to “Ender’s Game” with children being forced to take arms because of an overwhelming alien threat. The film is at its best when it’s focusing on these elements. There are some tense moments throughout with Cassie and also when she bumps into Evan. I’d say the first third of the film plays like clip show of disaster films. There’s a lot of variety here in terms of genre and tone. I mean that in a good way.

    The biggest problem is that it’s based on another one of these Apocalyptic YA novels. For all of the cool action and potentially deep philosophical questions you could ask about what these characters have to go through, what the film ultimately boils down to is a bunch of teenagers having to juggle saving the world and their high school romances. I’ve heard that there are three books in the series and I could have guessed as much because all YA novels come in trilogies. Once the romance begins to blossom you can start predicting dozens of plot points… and even some from the sequels that haven’t even been made yet. I knew ahead of time that if character X appeared at the beginning and Cassie commented on he/she being attractive, that they were going to survive all of the waves and that of all the places and of all the people in the world, they were going to meet up with Cassie again during the climax. I can tell you with full confidence that should we see a “6th Wave” and “7th Wave” there’s going to be a love triangle, a female best friend who is tough on the exterior but will ultimately warm towards at least one of the boys (that way everyone can end up in happy couples by the end), an evil and shady organization that isn’t what it seems and forced responsibility upon what is ultimately a “normal teenage girl”. I feel like a clairvoyant knowing ahead of time how the main cast’s actions are going to play out in the future and where, ultimately this series is going.

    I know teenage girls are going to fall in love with this. It’s got a female protagonist who’s tough, but also sensitive and despite the sci-fi adventure, it still holds close to it’s heart regular teenage drama like writing in your diary, caring about your family and friends, stressing out over whether or not that boy likes you and wanting to show everyone that you’re a strong woman in the making! It feels like it’s been plucked straight out of the brain of a 16-year-old who has already ploughed through “The Host”, “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” so many times that she’s decided she can write a novel too. Listen to the dialogue; pay attention to the way the characters react to each other and you’ll see what I mean. It’s also got a nice long shot of Alex Roe without his shirt on so the teens will go ballistic. Personally, I would have exed the romance altogether. As a matter of fact, take out the natural disasters and the plague. Have the four waves be “Pacific Rim”, “Maximum Overdrive”, “28 Days Later” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. With that set up there’s no time for love, and you’ve got yourself a whole lot less cheese.

    I suspect some people will be upset that a much more (if familiar) movie has been skipped over to get to the “main event”. Honestly, I didn’t mind the fact that we only caught glimpses of the world falling apart because I figured this would leave time for character development and complex ideas. Nah. This movie’s just too cheap and too eager to jump to the “juicy stuff” that is Cassie sucking face to please a grown man like me.

    I always try to give movies the benefit of the doubt, but this is just an attempt by Columbia pictures to ride on the coat tails of better films and squeeze change out of indiscriminating teenage girls. The more I think about the “The 5th Wave”, the cheesier, unimaginative and more predictable it seems. (Theatrical version on the big screen, February 2, 2016)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  3.2.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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