John Carter

When the movie begins with a narration, and that's not the voice of Morgan Freeman getting things started, you might want to make a run for it! I should have with John Carter, a boring movie with a boring title that employed some 2nd rate narrator who isn't Morgan Freeman.

Taylor Kitsch stars as John Carter - a former Confederate soldier living in Arizona and trying to hit it big by finding some gold in them thar hills. Of course, everyone keeps using him in some way, shape or form, when he just wants to live free.

A Union General, Powell (Bryan Cranston), has "drafted" Carter to help in battling local American Indians, but the soldier has stumbled across something more powerful than one of Ulysses S. Grant's top leaders.

Carter has found some strange device that transports him to Mars. Once there, he appears to have super strength from the difference in gravity, and finds himself caught in the middle of an extraterrestrial civil war led by Sab Than (Dominic West), who has been given ultimate power by some strange group led by Matai Shang (Mark Strong), and Sab Than will achieve some sort of invincibility if he successfully marries Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) - a princess who has been promised to Sab Than by her father, King Tardos Mors (Ciaran Hinds).

Are you completely lost at this point?

Will John Carter save Dejah Thoris?

Can Taylor Kitsch stay awake throughout the movie?

The last time I saw a leading man this droopy eyed, I was watching James Franco host the Oscars. Sadly, you will find yourself equally drowsy as John Carter muddles through over two hours of ho-hum special effects, non-existent writing and meaningless plot twists.

Director/co-writer Andrew Stanton and co-writers Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon (based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs story) want John Carter to be epic, but it only becomes an epic fail. Although all of the advertising is trying to make us realize this story came out before Star Wars, it feels like a lame Star Wars rip off, as well as borrowing from other better movies.

Then, John Carter becomes weighed down by attempts to bring in too many smaller subplots. If they had more depth to them, or something exciting to add, maybe it would make the movie a more intellectually stimulating diversion, but they feel tossed in without enough explanation.

Finally, Kitsch is the not ready for prime time star who doesn't bring anything special to John Carter. I know he is supposed to be some sort of tortured soul, but Kitsch doesn't show any trace of being dynamic enough to carry the movie. Where's the passion? Where's the action? Where's the emotion? I know he has something more in him, but it is not on display in this movie.

If John Carter was a date, you would be running off to the bathroom to call a friend, so the friend would call you ten minutes later with an "emergency", so you could get away.

John Carter is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.