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Playing out more like a cheesy small screen movie of the week, co-writers Janet Scott Batchler, Lee Batchler and Michael Robert Johnson's screenplay is a disastrously amateurish, cliché-riddled bag of formulaic nonsense attempting to cash in on post-production pyrotechnics vaguely inspired by historic events. The core of this disaster pretty well takes its cue from its predecessors and the likes of Titanic (1997), fabricating intertwining story lines for its fictional players to unwittingly shuffle around in under the looming shadow of reality's impending danger. Unlike Titanic, this feature is completely bereft of any interesting storytelling qualities. This isn't a carefully crafted re-enactment of well-documented facts from beginning to dire end. Sure, it begins by citing what Pliny the Younger witnessed, but Pompeii the movie is just a dress-up fantasy. A popcorn-selling screening room tease, in 3D. Don't get me wrong, that would be amazingly entertaining for an eager audience of disaster movies if these otherwise proven actors were given wonderfully meaty, compelling roles to burn up their scenes with before the ash plumes and fireballs fill that ancient sky. Yup. Being captivated by strong characters and fresh filmmaking would have been awesome, if what actually transpires on-screen didn't seem like a Netflix subscription and a few squares of toilet paper had been used to write the script.

As weak as it is, it's clear the screenplay attempts to dutifully give reasons to care about these eventual victims of nature. To make movie goers wonder if any of them would survive to fight the odds another day. If gladiator Atticus' raw heroics might bring him freedom and escape. To see if Milo and Cassia's dreamy, googly-eyed love could be strong enough to defy class status, molten lava, and him snapping her horse's neck. Stuff like that. The script is a stupid script.

Sadly, every character shoved onto the screen in period costume feels completely vapid and unimportant here. Stock caricatures, crowbarred in to eat up time. And, because the volcano doesn't erupt until the third act, time with these characters moves at a tectonic pace. Harington lurches around all young Russell Crowe-like, beefy and brooding and porn star oiled up. He grumbles a few wooden lines of dialogue and beats up some human props to get your attention, without bothering to flex any tangible screen presence normally expected from a starring lead. Compared to Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje's few supporting moments of testosterone-fuelled growling, Harington's Milo effortlessly fades into unimportance. Dull. Browning's Cassia catches Milo's eye by fluttering across the set in her sheer finery, like a girlish Liz Taylor throwback, awkwardly sporting an anachronistic British accent. Lame. Unimportant. Their forbidden PG-rated passion swells as the trembling volcano slowly readies to blow its molten load near perky Naples. Boring. Sutherland basically phones in his unconvincing, villainous lines. Ooh, Carrie-Anne Moss and Jared Harris step in as Browning's doting on-screen parents, potentially conjuring up ominous context by blah-blahing about the blah-blah and the blah-blah. Shut up, don't care. The poster and trailer promised fiery death from above. The movie's almost over. Don't make me reach for a diet cola and some Mentos. Get on with it, before someone else held captive picks a lock with a wooden shard. In a fleeing chariot. Chased by a tsunami.

yeah. That happens. #yikes

Pompeii is a talent-wasting cinematic pastiche of live-action scenes recycled from far better movies, barely worth the over-the-top CG animated special effects shown in the trailer. Its dull, dragged out performances inspire little more than a nasty urge to heckle and cheer the eventual body count, and is so direct-to-video-purgatory bad that I hoped locusts, land sharks, exotic stabbing plants - anything - would start attacking these characters long before the real star barfed up its first projectile lava chunk. Wait a couple of minutes for this goofy stinker to show up on late night basic cable. Reviewed 03/14, © Stephen Bourne, moviequips.ca

Click here for the moviequips Pompeii pressbook review at Hubpages.

Pompeii is rated PG by the Ontario Film Review Board, citing use of expletives, limited use of slurs, scenes that may cause a child brief anxiety, or fear, limited embracing and kissing, and restrained portrayals of non-graphic violence, and is rated G by la Régie du Cinéma in Québec.


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showtimes: http://www.google.ca/movies?near=kanata-ottawa&hl=en&view=map&date=0

REFERENCE:

Website: http://pompeiimovie.tumblr.com/
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6TRwfxDICM
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1921064/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii_(2014_film)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PompeiiMovieCA
Plus: http://www.pompeiisites.org/


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