“That’s fucking retarded.”

That was my very first, non-politically correct impression when I saw the movie announcement teaser for Cowboys & Aliens, and believe me when I say that my impression hasn’t changed even after watching the film in the theater.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie in a theater. I’m not even joking when I say that the only movie that compelled me to traverse the sticky theater floors of spilled soda and wads of chewed gum, buy a $10 tub of two-day old popcorn and a 8” box of Jujubes that had enough candy to fill a condom wrapper, and tolerate the never ending film commentary and cell phone calls from the crowds of tweenage twats and college frat fuckheads was to go see The Dark Knight.

As you can tell, I HATE HATE HATE going to movie theaters because it’s an extremely expensive and relatively unpleasant experience that requires something special for me to even contemplate putting myself through. But I had to bear through all the shit to go watch Cowboys & Aliens because, honestly, Cowboys & Aliens had a premise that potentially made it the perfect movie to actually listen to the would-be Mystery Science Theater 3000 style commentaries.

I couldn't have been more wrong...

So... Cowboys.... and Aliens... Hrmm...

Cowboys & Aliens is an adaption of Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's graphic novel of the same name, involving cowboys and Indians having shootouts with aliens and spaceships. Having not read the graphic novel, and likely never reading it after watching the movie, I don't particularly see the draw to Cowboys & Aliens that attracted director Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man AND the less-than-stellar Iron Man 2), a total of 11 big-named Hollywood producers such as Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer, and half-a-dozen writers.

What I keep telling myself is that this LEGION of Hollywood talent wasn't assembled because the concept of cowboys and aliens shooting each other was necessarily a good one, but that it was the only way for people to take a film titled "Cowboys & Aliens" seriously.

The story begins with 007 Daniel Craig playing the amnesiac, stone-faced, lone wolf cowboy Jake Lonergan (Loner-gun?) who wanders into little 1875 American Wild West town, Absolution, New Mexico, wearing a mysterious metal bracelet. Jake takes a lot of abuse defending the stereotypically oppressed townsfolk from greedy thugs, damn near systematically going from one confrontation to another until he winds up crossing the asshole uber-privileged son of rich cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), and the local lawmen who recognize Jake Lonergan as being a dangerous criminal. So Jake gets taken in by the law and right before he gets his ass tossed over to the US Marshals, shit hits the fan when a space ship appears and begins abducting people right off of the street.

If you see Daniel Craig's ass before the spaceship, the gun, or the alien device on his arm, I got bad news for you.

…

When a SPACE SHIP appears and begins abducting people right off of the street.

…

Now, I’m no Fox Mulder when it comes to UFOs and alien abductions, but aren’t UFOs and aliens normally more discreet? It’s at this point that my suspicions of Cowboys & Aliens being an entirely ‘meh, fuck it’ grindhouse styled film, like the cowboy vampire direct-to-DVD flop Bloodrayne 2, are made manifest, and the possibility that behind this goofy concept the talented production crew would make it a somewhat intelligent film dissipated in my overly audible “The fuck?!”

The common reaction to the first space ship scene

So under a hail of futile gunfire and screams from townsfolk thinking that the aliens are ‘demons’, Jake’s magic bracelet comes to life, and from that point on he learns how to use the bracelet as a weapon against the looming alien threat. Harrison Ford’s two-dimensional evil cattle baron character, Dolarhyde, rounds up a posse, including Jake simply for the sake of the alien technology strapped to Jake's wrist, and they set off to go fight the extraterrestrials who stole their friends and family for unknown purposes that border on experimentation and anal probing. A third character, Ella (Olivia Wilde) joins the posse with the guise that she knows more about the alien invaders than she lets on. Exactly what Ella’s connection to the aliens is, I won’t spoil because you should enjoy the whole 12 seconds spent formulating your own speculations.

Back in my day, we didn't have them fancy contraptions. We had to choke the chicken the ol' fashioned way.

During their travels, the learn that the aliens are equal opportunity abductors, as many Native American people are also being snatched from their teepees. At this point I actually got excited from the prospect of cowboys and Indians (er, Native Americans) putting their differences aside and battling a common enemy in a gripping and flamboyant series of battles, but director Jon Favreau (director of the visual feast, Iron Man) doesn’t give Cowboys & Aliens the edge it desperately needed.

In fact, for a bizarre genre-bending thriller, Cowboys & Aliens plays itself way too safe. For instance, all of the characters (Ford’s Dolarhyde, Craig’s Jake, etc) are stock, cardboard cutout American Western characters that feel as though they were lifted from old John Wayne movies, rather than complex characters like Russell Crowe and Christian Bale’s characters in the superior 3:10 to Yuma. Francis Dolarhyde… er, Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) is a stock monopolistic cattle baron who rules his corner of the West like a mobster, however Ford does bring a lot of charisma and downright ruthlessness to Dolarhyde, unlike Daniel Craig’s Jake Lonergan, the bland, stoic lone gun who comes off as a slightly B-movie Clint Eastwood from the Sergio Leone era. I had hoped to see British actor Daniel Craig at least struggle with a western drawling accent like an old woman trying to open a jar of pickles, but I didn't even get that.

A lot of scenes were downright unnecessary. For instance, it's awesome that cowboys and Native Americans are joining forces, but instead of nodding heads, and riding off to fight aliens on horseback, they pad out the scene just to help stretch a 70 minute concept into a 120 minute movie.

The most disappointing thing about Cowboys & Aliens is that it isn’t even close to stupid action-and-special-effects porn (Independence Day is obviously the first movie that comes to mind). The visual effects are 'okay' rather than pushing boundaries or going over the top, and most of the time you’re looking at the beautiful backgrounds than the action in the foreground. Sure, there's a handful of decent scenes (none of which I will ruin for you, if you actually care) but the whole film was just overwhelmingly "meh".

"Holy fuck, thems demons gots theirselves a flying wagoncart!"

Cowboys & Aliens is just bland. The special effects aren't mind-blowing, and the characters are cut-and-paste from almost every western film ever made.

Lone, stone faced gunslinger? Check.
Evil cattle baron? Check.
Goofy saloon owner? Check.
Mysterious person who knows about the alien menace? Check.

But under the surface of Cowboys & Aliens there's an underlying theme of 'manifest destiny' which turns the colonization of the United States on its head, in an interesting way. The European settlers managed to successfully colonize the Americas and nearly drive the natives to extinction due to their technological advances, but mostly in the field of weaponry. What Cowboys & Aliens does is take 'manifest destiny' to the next level, where extraterrestrials come swooping out of the skies, possessing technology beyond that of the 19th century, and beyond the understanding of 19th century people, who can't understand anything the technology and refer to them as 'demons'. So, naturally, warring settlers and the natives have to settle their differences and fight a common enemy.

Overall, I'd say that I went into Cowboys & Aliens looking for cheap LULZ and came out disappointed that the film wasn't incredibly good, or incredibly bad, just mediocre. Harrison Ford outshines Daniel Craig, despite being the #2 leading man in this film, but neither of them give off a performance worthy of their past accomplishments. The special effects are also just unimpressive. They're not bad by any sense of the word, but given that the director of Cowboys & Aliens also directed Iron Man (and its relatively mediocre sequel) I expected more 'pizazz'. It's like Favreau used all of his talent in Iron Man 1 and it's been a downhill slide ever since then. The concept is rediculous but it didn't even attempt to make itself a big budget mockbuster like Machete or Grindhouse, which not only hurt my expectations, but made an outlandish concept not that outlandish in the least.

If you want LULZ, you'll need to look somewhere else.
If you want a good sci-fi, you'll need to look somewhere else.
If you want a good western, you'll need to look somewhere else.
If you want a good action film, you're in the ballpark but you'll still probably want to look somewhere else.

Cowboys & Aliens is just... underwhelming, especially considering that they had a premise that could have been intelligent, or hysterically self deprecatingly bad.