Movie Review: Tron Legacy

Well, imaginary readers, it's been a while since I've posted a movie review.  Tonight I am watching Tron: Legacy, and I have to give it an enthusiastic "meh."

Tron Legacy has excellent visuals.  Let me just get that out there from the beginning.  Visually it is a beautiful movie.  They even managed to have a young Jeff Bridges digitally put onto a body double for most of the movie, so it looks like you've got Jeff from the same time as the original Tron was made.  It's really impressive.

And, since lots of computery people wear masks (for some reason), Daft Punk has a brief cameo as a couple of DJs, which was kind of a fun wink at the audience.

So, so far we have two things going for us: fantastic visuals and the "hey, it's that guy!" moments.  Unfortunately, this film has very little else to offer.  I could talk about the bad acting (even from Jeff Bridges, which is hard, since he is so awesome), the lame writing, the Good Guy Ex Machina ending, and plenty of other things, but I won't.  Let me just focus on two things, one intangible and one very tangible. 

The intangible problem with this movie is that it lacks charm.  Tron was just such a charming, fun movie, but Tron: Legacy isn't.  It's hard to put my finger on the exact problem, but I think it is that they tryed to make it epic and big, instead of just making it fun.

The more tangible flaw was the serious over-use of a couple of effects.  For instance, every time anyone did anything cool (dodge a flying computer-frisbee, crash a light cycle, etc) they went into super-slow-motion.  It was kind of insulting after a while.  It felt like a laugh track.  The people who made the movie didn't think I was smart enough to catch how totally amazing that move was, so they slowed it down for me.  It got irritating.

And finally, one unrelated thought.  In the original Tron, the programs all saw the user as some sort of God, which was interesting because we got to deal with the user feeling like he was nothing and everyone else feeling like he was everything.  It made the character deeper.  In the sequel, they try to make the user into God.  Flynn was sort of a cross between Rand-Jesus from the last couple Wheel of Time books and Neo.  It was a bit much.

All in all, it was an OK movie, but I'll probably never watch it again.