"BATTLESHIP" (PG-13)

HH

TAYLOR KITSCH, LIAM NEESON, BROOKLYN DECKER, RIHANNA, JESSE PLEMONS, ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD

Does it make any sense to say that I enjoyed a movie this badly made?

Make no mistake, this is not one of director Peter Berg's better outings. The silly "Aliens In Cool Ships Invade Earth" plot is further weakened by several sequences that just don't make any sense.

But I have to say, when they finally turn the collective might of the battleships and destroyers against anonymous invading aliens, it provided a third-grade sort of thrill.

If that brand of violence doesn't appeal to you, and if "Transformer"-style ships and weapons aren't of interest, skip this one entirely.

It helps if you are a "Friday Night Lights" (the television show) fan, as the cool Taylor Kitsch and the funny Jesse Plemons join their former producer Berg for this outing.

But Kitsch's bad-boy character doesn't make sense, getting pinched for breaking and entering one moment and serving as a naval officer the next.

I like Kitsch, but they push his character too far here, both before the aliens land in their crab-like, water-hopping ships and after he becomes the planet's only hope.

Just as silly: the dramatically limited Brooklyn Decker as his perfect admiral's-daughter girlfriend and the skinny little Rihanna as a naval officer doing battle with a big, brawny alien. As an actress, the best you can say about the singer is that she's not that terrible.

Berg has said the reason he wanted to make this film was his fascination with the military might of Navy ships--not the popular Hasbro board game it's supposedly based on

His preoccupation with sea power is the one thing he gets right. The best scenes happen when the destroyers and other warships finally cut loose on the alien spaceships that descend on our planet after receiving a "Hey there!" message from Earth.

But Berg violates a key rule of action films: making the aliens and their ships all-powerful one moment and thoroughly whipped the next.

Ditto for the aliens themselves, who are unbeatable until they are challenged by the right good guys.

With a better script and a slightly better cast, this could have been much more successful.