Mini movie review: Pacific Rim

This is all you need to know plotwise about Pacific Rim:  On a future Earth, a chasm has opened in the Pacific Ocean, releasing gigantic alien monsters ("kaiju") from another dimension to decimate the world's coastal cities.  After fighting ineffectively against these creatures with traditional weapons, the people of Earth united to build gigantic combat robots ("jaegers"), each piloted by two mind-melded humans.  It is a last ditch effort with the remaining jaegers to close the chasm because the kaiju are getting bigger and smarter and they're showing up more often - the humans are at the end of their tether.

This is what you need to know otherwise:  The cast is decent, with the pretty Charlie Hunnam as one of the jaeger pilots, Idris Elba as the jaeger fleet commander, Charlie Day as a spastic scientist (who pretty much steals every scene he's in) and Ron Perlman as a thug running the black market for kaiju parts.  Hunnam is a total cutie-pie, by the way.  Yes, the dialogue can be cheesy but, really, you're not there for the dialogue - you're there to see giant robots fighting giant monsters and on that front, the flick delivers.  Both monsters and robots are exquisitely designed and rendered, and even though the nonstop large scale destruction does get a little exhausting after a while, writer/director Guillermo del Toro shoots the action in such a way that you can actually see the action.  I really, really liked it for what it was.

I don't understand why Pacific Rim hasn't been doing better: it is exactly the kind of brainless movie fun that summer calls for.  Even if it doesn't have big name recognition with its actors, it's still ROBOTS VS. MONSTERS and that should be all anyone needs to know.