Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

With our favorite film studio The Asylum releasing their mockbusting movie ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ via the Sci-Fi Channel parallel to the Mega Budgeted ‘Battle: Los Angeles’, all I can say is if you have to see one flick this weekend showing Los Angeles being leveled by crazed alien invaders… then you should probably drag your happy ass down to theater and watch ‘Battle: Los Angeles’. BUT… if you have to see two flicks featuring Los Angeles getting leveled by crazed alien invaders… then you should probably run out and rent ‘Skyline’. BUT… if you absolutely positively without exception have to see three flicks in succession featuring Los Angeles getting leveled by crazed alien invaders, with no regards to your sanity… then ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ is a can’t miss proposition.

Without warning a big alien ship has descended from the sky, perched itself on top of some Los Angeles iconic building and then begins flooding the building and the surrounding areas with pretty wavy blue lights. Never fear because our Air Force and their legion of Super Model Air Force pilots are on the scene. They fire missiles but these missiles are trapped and cuddled in a goofy sphere of light and sent right back at them. Super Model pilots are no more.

We are under attack! Our more accurately Los Angeles is under attack because as far as I know the rest of us are cool. It is time for our forces to mobilize and our jet fighters to take off and do battle. Hardcore pilot Lt. Solano (Theresa June Tao) and her stunning full set of lips would like to take off and kick some alien ass but bitch ass pilot Lt. Arnstead (Edward DeRuiter) has stage fright and can’t move. I would like to think in honor of me and my tireless chronicling of Asylum films that writer / director Mark Atkins named the bitch ass sissy Arnstead after me, Armstead, but probably not.

Eventually the pilots get off the ground. We watch Lt. Solano do battle with one of the hordes of alien space ships which results in her ejecting from her plane and crashing into an enemy fighter and then celebrating as she descends to the earth in her parachute. Girlfriend just crashed a fifty million dollar jet into one of ten thousand alien spaceships and she’s happy out about it. Lt. Solano, worst Air Force Pilot Ever.

But the movie is actually about grounded Air Force pilot Lt. Tyler Laughlin (Kel Mitchell), grounded for reasons which will never be explained, and his efforts to get 1942 Airman Pete Rodgers (Dylan Vox) to the secret Sector Seven base that everybody knows about. Somehow Airman Rodgers got caught up in a time displacement warp landing his plane in the year 2010, and while that might sound amazing to me and you, apparently this happens all the time in Los Angeles because everybody else in this movie accepts this occurrence with all of the shock and awe of someone telling them ‘Sanford and Son’ is now available on DVD. Personally, I’d keep my eye on this guy because for starters he looks weird and secondly his story changes every five minutes.

It’s looking bad for our heroes and their journey to Sector Seven with alien spaceships about to do them grave harm when suddenly from the sky descends Sector Seven agent Karla (Nia Peeples) and her Samurai Sword. I don’t why this woman is fighting aliens armed with lasers with a Samurai Sword but there she is. All the Aliens want, according to Airman Rodgers who speaks Alien, is for them to free the E.T. that they have holed up in the basement of Sector Seven. Or not. Who knows? It’s never really explained. Just know that grounded Lt. Laughlin will have take flight once again and Agent Karla will do battle with a space monster with her samurai sword. The Aliens don’t stand a chance. Or maybe they do. Who knows?

No my friends, ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ is not a good movie, but this is kind of a given. It did feel more like ‘Battle of that Paintball Amusement Field Down the Street they Let Us Borrow for the Day’ than an actual ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ but blowing up L.A. is expensive so we’ll let that pass. And watching Kel Mitchell’s psychic interpretation of a man mentally flying a spaceship was… something else. I also have to admit that as this movie neared the end I had no idea what was supposed to be going on. I knew the ultimate goal was destroying the alien spaceship but somewhere in there the entire narrative, which was never all that concrete to begin with, totally escaped me. Maybe it was the gun fight with the suspended laser shooting toaster oven, or the old commander that shot and dropped alien space ships with his six-shooter, or the space monster on the ship that liked to yell at people real loud but somewhere along the line something caused me to totally lose focus.

But while ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ can’t be termed a good movie by just about anybody’s definition, I have seen worse. Mostly from The Asylum, but I have seen worse. The action, as it were, is almost non-stop from the first frame to the last and while this action didn’t stop this movie from feeling like it was moving with concrete shoes on at times, it was still plentiful. The special effects were also plentiful, yes they were suspect in most cases, but they were there. Nia Peeples is still pretty damned hot and that is with this woman nipping viciously at the heels of the age of fifty and Kel Mitchell is still alive and working. He has yet to shake his singular acting style of looking confused and befuddled, but we are happy to see the young man still doing his thing.

Sometimes incomprehensible and often slow moving despite the plethora of action set pieces, ‘Battle of Los Angeles’ is not a good a movie. No way. But it has an ancient hot chick fighting alien spaceships with a Samurai Sword. Friends and family ask why I watch this stuff. Come on man, where else are you going to see something like that? That big budget movie didn’t have any of that.