A film called Cowboys and Aliens really shouldn’t take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) seems to completely forget this fact from the get go, leaving us with a film that is incredibly silly and terribly tedious in equal measures. A movie featuring the two b-movie staples of cowboys and little green men should have been a lot of fun. But slapstick gore, wobbly sets, cheesy special effects and, most importantly, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor—in short, all the fun that the film’s title suggests—are missing. Instead we get a dumbed down True Grit with aliens rather than an 18th century version of Starship Troopers.
The confused and convoluted story sees an unnamed man (the very craggy-looking Daniel Craig) wake up in the middle of 19th century Mid-west wearing a weird metal bracelet, unsure who he is and where he’s come from. In his quest to find this out, he discovers he’s actually wanted criminal Jake Lonergan, who robbed local cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, playing a grumpier, more bigoted and less likeable older version of Han Solo). Just as Jake is being taken to the Marshall, all hell breaks loose when a load of aliens swoop into town blowing the place up and carting off a load of the locals, including Dolarhyde’s son— not before Jake shoots one of the space ships out of the sky with his bracelet though. So the unlikely group forms an unlikely posse and head out to find their kinfolk, stop the aliens and save the world in a confusing journey with further run-ins with the aliens, a meet-up with Jake’s old gang and some very dubious interactions with the local native Americans.
It’s not a total disaster: Craig smolders his way through the whole thing in his usual stoic way, and it does occasionally look spectacularly gritty and there are a few jump out of your seat moments. But there really aren’t enough of them, and certainly not enough laughs to make up for the tired sub-plots we’ve seen a million times before (and a slightly excessive sprinkling of violence). It also seems to be chock full of every Spielberg (who is a producer) movie cliché under the sun: little kid, check; cute devoted pet, check; oh and, an environmental message about robbing the earth of its natural resources. Spielberg really should steer clear of aliens for a while, or at least leave his directors alone.