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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037011/
See also:
╗ TV Review: Ben 10
╗ TV Review: NCIS - ?Designated Target"
╗ DVD Review: CSI - Crime Scene Investigation: The Complete Seventh Season
This Thanksgiving weekend brought the opportunity for a shared father/son event. The live-action version of Ben 10 hit the small screens on Cartoon Network. If you missed it, I?m sure it?ll be repeated soon and the DVD has to follow.
Ben 10 is about ten-year-old Ben Tennyson?s discovery of an alien device called the Omnitrix that allows him to change his form into that of ten aliens. Hence the name. However, he soon adds more aliens to that list.
Created by Man of Action, a collective of four well-known comics writers ? Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Don Rouleau, and Steven T. Seagle, the series is currently in its fourth season. It also spawned a recent animated movie, Ben 10: Secret of the Omnitrix.
The show?s enduring popularity resulted in the live-action movie. The show profiles high among pre-teen boys, but the network wanted to go the live-action route with a lot of CG effects to draw in young girls and adults. Graham Phillips (Evan Almighty) stars as Ben and brings with him all the cuteness pre-teen girls can stand. And the CG stuff is really well done for a show with a $5 million budget.
Since I like my kid and I?ve been a follower of the series, I joined him for the movie when it premiered. We had a blast. Granted, some of the action was schlocky, the humor was juvenile (such as Ben?s revenge on the bullies in the local café), and there was way too much touchy-feely on the part of Ben?s incredibly weird parents, but it was a fun watch. It was really cool getting to see the live-action fight scenes.
But like my son said, there was really a lot more talking in the movie than action, which isn?t like the animated series. More than that, in the cartoon series Ben is usually trying to save his life or maybe even the future of the world as we know it. Getting dissed at school was just boring after everything he?s been through. However, for people who hadn?t seen the series before, it was probably a good introduction and geared more toward plotlines they were used to.
It?s just that Ben 10 has been so much more than that in the animated series.
But this movie did give us a deeper look into the Plumbers, the super-secret organization that Ben?s Grandpa Max belongs to. We?ve been hearing about them for years, seeing a few of them, and even looking at all the technology they had. But we hadn?t seen them in action.
Some of the coolness of the movie for me came from the fact that one of my iconic childhood heroes plays Grandpa Max. I couldn?t believe that Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man!) had signed on for the part. I enjoyed watching him, but during the action sequences I kept expecting to see him go into slow motion and throw manhole covers and stuff.
Robert Picardo (Star Trek Voyager?s Doctor) starred as Ben?s principal and one of the plumbers. He played the goofy role to the hilt.
The plot revolved around a villain known as Eon. Grandpa Max tells Ben that Eon was the first alien the Plumbers ever faced, and that they thought they?d locked him up. Instead, when Grandpa Max leads the kids there, they find out Eon has escaped. Grandpa Max also feels certain that Eon will be after his doomsday device known as the Hands of Armageddon.
Only four of Ben?s alien forms were presented in the movie. Heatblast, the flame-throwing alien, opened up the movie with action. His powers looked pretty good onscreen. Grey Matter was played completely for laughs, but anyone could have done the special effects because they really weren?t all that special. Diamondhead, another fan fave, was all right, but the action was way too confined and over with before you know it.
The real scene-stealer was Wildmutt, one of the craziest forms Ben takes. He looks like an eyeless, shaggy dog with moves that would make a ninja green with envy. The CG on these scenes alone were worth the wait. Wildmutt is totally awesome when he?s in action, and he looks completely real. When he growled and his huge mouth flew open to reveal his teeth, his jaws looked wide enough to swallow a pumpkin. My kid and I were delirious over those scenes because ? in some ways ? they looked even cooler in CG than in animation. Wildmutt looked real!
Since the current season of Ben 10 is slated to be the last, although Cartoon Network is supposed to bring a new series featuring a 15-year-old Ben to lineup, everyone hopes Ben 10: Race Against Time will kick off a series of live-action movies. |
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