Restart the Earth - Die grüne Flut

I'll mention the positive first:

• better than B level acting (but not better than A level)
• very good plotline (except for CCP typical 1 person sacrifices self for everyone alive)

Now some of the negatives:

• terrible script/lines
• terrible camera work
• even worse CGI.

Now, regarding my subject/head line: The idea of plants attacking humans (including the design of the plants' cannibalistic "heads") comes from the book/movie The Day Of The Triffids".

That old movie wasn't too bad.

This movie is slightly better than that black & white one.

But the book is better than both.

So the current "Featured Review" is wrong.

Mind you, they probably didn't know about that old book/movie.

After almost every movie company continues to bank on remakes of remakes, here we get an original idea, and pretty well implemented! YES, there is still intelligent life on this planet.

And they actually did a real good job. OK, a few of the more tried and true, less original, plot devices were used (dad more worried about saving his daughter), but you have to expect a minor part of every script to do that (and hence not moving to a 7/8)

But lets get to the real things that matter. The acting is rather good. LOTs of CG, maybe a bit too much, but properly supports the storyline. The direction is well done and the script (my usual hot button) is better than fair, maybe even higher than. All in all, this is a production team that should keeping moving forward. You are on target ... unless you start doing remakes or sequels, and then I will not be as positive.

Well, what a movie.

Not exactly rife with deep philosophical under tones but if you check your brain in at the door and don't aim too high, you should not be overly disappointed.

The story itself is pretty straight forward and is not what I would call taxing. Plants, mad scientists buggering with things they shouldn't be, end of the world, yada, yada, yada.

The staging of the story was, well, nothing flash. The CQI and the set pieces were at best acceptable and at worse ordinary sometimes boarding on the laughable. For example, it was more than noticeable that as the characters were seen traversing the landscape between the high-rise buildings and the cars on the street in some scenes, the definition of the wider horizon of the landscape was decidedly flat in nature indicating an obvious green screen effect. It certainly screamed low budget.

The other part of the staging of the story, the actors, is a different kettle of fish. Some of the acting was fine, some of the acting was more than a little melodramatic and some was just horrible. Case in point on this, the gentleman who played the rotund science tech "21" (and the comedy foil) simply put couldn't act. This criticism maybe harsh though as I watched the Chinese language version with subtitles (I cannot watch dubbed movies) and a lot of his lines obviously lost a lot in translation.

Finally, the child.

This child should win the Oscar for being the single most unwarranted and annoying child character in any movie since Dakota Fanning played Rachel Ferrier in Steven Spielberg's 2005 War of the Worlds. Certainly, as the film progresses and the child becomes progressive more annoying you hope that the plants do the viewers a favor and eat her and by the end of the movie, you are left wondering if the father saved the right person....

As the movie goes, quite the mixed bag but I have seen worse so maybe 6 out of 10.

Very fun film, i was very sceptical as usual with these chinese films with no other reviews, but my risk paid off!

The film basically follows a father and daughter + some military guys on a journey to complete their mission.

As we all know chinese cgi can sometimes be a bit ropey, that is somewhat true here but its more than serviceable, however some of it is really good and the scenery of the overgrown/postapocalyptic city is the star of the show, i was truley amazed at the visuals.

The plant/monster things were very cool.

The story and how things develop is very cliche and very hollywood which for me isnt a bad thing, why fix what isnt broke right.

Overal a solid action sci/fi post apocalypse film.

The visuals were decent - for 1990's CGI, and I can live with that, but the story, especially the dialogue, was too cliched and overly melodramatic. Even at a mere 89 min runtime, I got bored with the long dragged out and mostly unnecessary scenes. It was just the same cliched and predictable "stretched out to the max" scene after scene. The entire bridge crossing scene felt like it was 20 mins long, and you can easily predict what will happen each step of the way. This entire film could've easily been chopped down to a 20 min short film, and it would've been much more enjoyable. The casting and performances were ok for the most part, some too cheesy and forced for my liking. There are much better disaster films, even dating back to the 80's; this one was overhyped without reason. As much as the trailer looks inviting, the actual film is very lame. It's a very generous 5/10 from me.