Hasbro's Transformers have made a mint; why not make a movie out of Battleship? Just search-and-replace a Transformers script: a dope (Taylor Kitsch, of director Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights) with an improbably hot girlfriend (Brooklyn Decker) must rise to the occasion when goateed aliens (whose ships unfold like Transformers) initiate a second Pearl Harbor. Kitsch is a Navy lieutenant thrust into command; he'll have to team up with a Japanese captain (Tadanobu Asano) and some old salts — who know how to get a battleship out of dry dock — to send the invaders back where they came from. Among those conferring dignity on this silly enterprise is real veteran Gregory D. Gadson, who lost his legs in Iraq and here takes on an alien with his fists. The pop star Rihanna gets to fire on F24 and R26 (the movie's grid is bigger than the home board game), but no one utters the immortal line, "You sunk my battleship!" You can't help but wonder what Hasbro will do with Candy Land.
