DVD Review: Attack the Block

Attack the Block
(originally released theatricaly in the US on July 29th, 2011)

Rated R
1 Hour 28 Minutes

Story
A teen gang in South London defend their block from an alien invasion.

Cast
John Boyega
Jodie Whittaker
Alex Esmail
Franz Drameh
Leeon Jones

Rotten Tomatoes
90% Fresh

My Grade
B-

Ok so I've heard from a few people in my life recently that I just need to see "Attack the Block". The sci-fi flick where bizarre looking aliens invade a small block in London and gang of teens must fight them off and save the day. People ranted and raved, hooted and hollered about this movie so I finally decided to watch. I knew going in, that they hype I heard over the film would slightly damper my opinion on the movie...which is normally the case with most people.

Let me also say that I have a really hard time getting most British humor. I also have a hard time understanding the accent in some movies/shows. I had to watch the movie with subtitles on just so I could know what they were saying half the time. That's all on me, that's not a knock towards the film obviously. I just don't get their lingo. From what I understand the movie was supposed to be kind of funny, but I honestly did not get it. I didn't laugh. Don't accuse me of being stupid or uneducated either...British humor is not for everyone, and I'm one of those people. So the style of humor was not for me and flew right over my head.

The action and the story though was really cool. In movies we usually see alien invasions/zombie attacks in huge, well known, populated cities (LA, New York, Paris, etc.) but never really in a small burrow or town such as the one featured in the film. Also, movies like this typically will have a big name star saving the day. It's not often you see a story like this where the heroes are a group of young kids. Story wise, I didn't think it was brilliant or anything but it had some solid elements to it. I liked how it touched on social classes, and slight aspects of racial profiling amongst the alien attacks. I like that they gave these kids some depth and reasons to root for them.

The action was pretty cool if not a little silly, but I think that was probably the intention. Plenty of slicing and dicing to go around. A nice amount of blood and guts to get a gore junkie excited I suppose. The aliens were...very interesting. You know, they kind of reminded me of the monsters from "Critters", ha. They were big floofy poof ball things with giant mouths with sharp teeth that glowed blue. So I guess they were kind of creepy.

I enjoyed Attack the Block for what it's worth. I didn't freak out over it like people did last year, and it's probably not a movie I would buy. But it was a good, fun one time viewing. It's just that British stuff tends to make my brain go all mushy...so I'm a lot more to blame than the movie itself.