Joss Whedon transfers his popular Buffy and Angel skills to the large screen with an original productiom called Serenity. The plot is a convoluted series of conspiracy layred upon conspiracy with anti-heros in the form of space pirates, and a teenager with a sulk that would annoy even manic depressives with psychosis. The rag tag space pirates find themsolves involved in far more devious schemes to create a totalitarian world order that is supposedly intended to create a world without sin.

Right off the bat, Serenity shows promise with it’s special effects bonanza and pumped up introduction to the good guys. And once more, right off the bat the entire film is made predictable by that very opening. You really don’t have to watch the rest of it to know what will happen.

In fact as I was writing the script in my head and following Whedon’s monotonous drivel of a script to a tee, my friend fell alseep only to wake up an hour later and vocally recite all the crap on screen before it was said. Shockingly bad would be a calm understatement that barely begins to scratch the surface of this poor excuse for a sci-fi film.

The cast are average at best, with none of them really approaching likeable. The bad guys in the form of the Alliance are equally derived of any character, and appear wooden instead of comitted believers of their own cause to purify the world. The space pirates, the good guys that are the crew of the Serenity ship in the film, turn from thieves to humanitarian, sacrifical martyrs to the cause which makes no sense and is hardly reasoned within the mediocre script writing that takes place.

If they actually provided some logic, it wouldn’t be so bad. Except they chose to follow the cliche of ensuring every “not-so-bad-guys-turn-good” scene from any film that’s used it was ripped and rehashed in the latest celluloid trash from Hollywood.

Cheese. I like cheese. The type you put in your sandwich. Perhaps some lettuce and Ploughman’s pickle would not go amiss. But film cheese is something I watch with cringing refusal, where my spine decides to play devolution and retract causing immense pain at any cheese related scenes.

This film is chock full of the wrong kind of cheese and lays it on super thick. Once more film cliches are present offering nothing you have not seen before, predicted or probably written in a test of skill at script writing a sci-fi school production when you were 11 years old.

Fun and entertainment seemed to have packed their bags and hitchhiked with the film makers being fully aware of this fact, and even paying them their last pay check for their two minute presence. It’s the sort of sci-fi film that doesn’t require any intelligence, with the sci-fi element being not very original, offering no new ideas or concepts, even the vehicles and evironments seem reminscent of previous sci-fi films.

Coming from the creator of Buffy and Angel, you can expect about two moments of interesting fight scenes, but so unoriginal in its take that you could clearly replace the little girl with Sarah
Michelle Gellar’s stunt double and put in some Buffy music. It’s fast, snappy, but ultimately a token gesture, as is the pathetically poor space battle towards the end. Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 could put this rubbish to shame, and with less money to spend.

My friend summed up Serenity aptly. It’s like a mini-series slapped together to make a movie. It could easily be broken down, throw in some Dawson’s Creek style cheese, the fights from buffy and Joss Whedon has another series in his hands. A pilot for the show proper, or perhaps a made for TV movie.

I feel sorry for people who probably wanted a good night out the cinema, to be entertained with mindless Hollywood spectaculars, only to come out feeling more thrilled by the cleaner toilet facilities in the building, or the decor of the popcorn section.

Verdict: So overrated it’s a crime against humanity. Chuck it out with the rest of the space garbage