Cowboys & Aliens

Bomb Rating: 

Think of Cowboys & Aliens as the wet spot on your mattress after a night of questionable passion. Everyone knows who MADE the wet spot, but no one wants to own up to it.

Cowboys & Aliens is the worst movie Harrison Ford has starred in since the last time he played a grizzled old man setting out on one last adventure to save the world from aliens. That's right – Ford's agent must only be sending him screenplays where he gets to wear a big hat and fight poorly-defined extra-terrestrial bad guys in the middle of nowhere, because that's exactly what happened in both the last Indiana Jones movie and this pathetic excuse for a comic adaptation.

What makes Cowboys & Aliens so incredibly terrible, exactly? Is it the fact that we are expected to believe that a race of super intelligent beings from another world are completely incapable of defending themselves against a rag-tag posse of cowboys, Native Americans and children on horseback? Well, that's a start. All they would have needed, really, were some smallpox infected blankets, a bar of soap and an endless supply of Old Grand-Dad. Or how about the idea that Daniel Craig's outlaw character, a man who without question never went to school past the first grade, is somehow capable of operating weaponry that is not only completely alien in its technology but also probably requires a master's degree simply to find the on button. Yeah, that was pretty hard to believe, too.

But the worst part of Cowboys & Aliens? Absolutely nothing happens. For like, two hours. Sure, some cows get fried by energy weapons from space and a bunch of filthy, dirty western townsfolk get scooped up into the sky like so many plush toys in a mechanical claw penny arcade, but other than that this movie is essentially a first-person shooter adapted for the screen. Forget the original comic book – Cowboys & Aliens has no room, nor even a need for a storyline. As long as there are ugly ET's to kill, sacrificial settlers to be slaughtered and pretty girls from another planet to save the day in the final reel by transforming into an energy weapon of unbelievable power, this big piece of shit is all set, thank you very much.

Think of Cowboys & Aliens as the wet spot on your mattress after a night of questionable passion. Everyone knows who MADE the wet spot, but no one wants to own up to it. Everyone knows that SOMEONE is going to have to sleep in the memories of your coital explosions, but no one wants to be that person. Cowboys & Aliens KNOWS you don't want to really be subjected to its endless parade of explosions and bovine assault, but it ALSO knows that you don't want to be at home drinking alone on yet another Sunday night. It's lose, lose, really.

Thanks, Harrison, for having the star power to get this shit made, and I hope you sent Daniel a very nice card apologizing for Aykroyding his career.

To spread the word about this Cowboys & Aliens review on Twitter.