Pacific Rim - Jamie's take

I'm a big Del Toro fan. And on the surface, Pacific Rim promises plenty for a big Del Toro fan. Massive monsters, massive robots, and massive-headed Ron Perlman. But it's a kid's movie. And that's what you should know going into the film. It's for kids.

A bloody big ruskie robot

The plot is this: in the future, giant monsters have been popping out of an inter-dimensional portal in the sea and attacking our cities. Mankind has built giant robots to wrestle them to death. It takes two people to pilot a robot and they interconnet with one another's minds to do it - called 'drifitng'. The hero and his brother, let's call him Danny, are robot pilots, but while they are battling a monster, Danny dies. Fast forward five years, and some stupids in charge of the world have foolishly closed the robot programme because they think building a big wall along the coast is a better way to defend against the monsters. Turns out it isn't. There are only a few robots left, but suddenly more and bigger monsters have started coming through the portal. So robot programme boss Idris Elba calls the hero out of retirement to join humanity's last-gasp attack. At the training base the hero becomes friends with a Japanese woman and argues with an Australian pilot who's mean and who drives one of the other robots with his dad. Then they all pull it together and fight some damn monsters. The hero's played by Charlie Hunnam and he wears a carefully weathered woolly jumper (like the Matrix, everyone seems to have picked their clothes from the H&M derelicte collection).

Unfortunately the dialogue and the characters are so basic it's basically a mime. For toddlers. For adults it is painful. Ron Perlman, who plays a flamboyant, mercenary smuggler of dead monster parts, is great. It must be down to him being a fantastic actor, because it's unlikely the script was a lot better just for his bits. And Idris Elba is fine, playing a stoic God of a man. Despite some awful lines. But... But some of the others. Jeez. Mainly, the Japanese heroine. She is so bad at acting my audience (an audience of uber-fan geeks predisposed to love this film, who all piled in to the BFI Imax 3D for the first public screening in the UK) were coughing laughter at her emoting attempts.

The other problem is scale. As soon as the giant monsters are seen at sea, which is a lot of the time, they stop being giant monsters because there's nothing against which to compare them. Without buildings or people around, we could be watching 10mm-tall robots fighting flea monsters. I stress, I am not a child and hopefully kids will love it. But as a 32 year old, on first viewing at least, I came out craving Cloverfield. The monster in that film is viewed from a human eye-level perspective in built human environments, which gives a context for the scale that makes you really feel there is a giant monster stomping around. Plus it boasts more realistic dialogue and, ironically, more 3D humans. All creating a more scary and transporting experience.

Maybe I'm just too old for this sh*t. A robot hitting a monster in the face with an oil tanker might have got the ten-year-old me giddy. But even for kids, I don't know. This doesn't feel like it could have the impact of Jurassic Park. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't have kids and I wasn't drifting with any when I watched this.

But as a grown-up, even a childish one, I wanted something more sophisticated. Just the level of Del Toro's unabashedly pulpy seam - the Hellboys and Blade 2 - would have been fine. Pacific Rim felt like Mr Bean. Made for a lowest common denominator international audience.

I think it will get a pass from a lot of geek critics because, quite rightly, they love what Del Toro usually brings to the table - sparky myth, amazing monsters and a big dose of originality. I hate to diss Pacific Rim, because I love Del Toro. Hollywood should still give him $250 million every 3 years to make what he wants. Unfortunately this film would get panned if it was directed by Roland Emmerich.