Stonados is one of those movies where you can tell from the title and plot-line that it is not a film to be taken seriously, and that is true of most SyFy original movies actually. It is like Sharknado as a disaster movie with giant stones, except for this viewer it was nowhere near as entertaining. Stonados does have a fun title idea and title, as well as an opening scene that is tense and to the point. The acting is fitting within the genre and the story itself, it is not great but none of it is anywhere near Tara Reid terrible(even the actor playing the man who tries to flirt with Joe's daughter and he was the weak link of the cast), at least the actors actually seem to be concerned about the situation. Stonados does have a very drab look to it though, and a vast majority of the special effects are poorly-textured and hurried-looking, and even for really big rocks the stones seemed out of proportion. There is a lot of dramatic music and there are one too many times where it does get too much and rather sluggish-sounding, while the script has a lot of terrible one-liners, technobabble that has a very make-it-up-as-you-go-along-without-checking-that-it-makes-sense vibe and one of the biggest and most clichéd understatements in any recent movie in "I think we might have ourselves a very big problem." The story had potential but was thinly structured and very predictably and ridiculously told. The science was wacky that you had the feeling that there was little research or scientific background behind the scenes, and then there's so many plot holes the size of large craters to fill a novel listing them. And there was little sense of threat(there were flashes but it was never consistent), thrills or suspense. Sharknado was a long way from great but was fun and kind of a guilty pleasure. That feeling is less frequent and more controlled in Stonados, but actually the movie also tries too hard to be dramatic and comes across as very overly-serious that it also forgets to be fun consequently and is devoid of almost all the ingredients characteristic of a disaster movie. The death scenes are few and between and what there is silly and very tame, again with little threat or sense of danger, and the father-daughter relationship amongst other relationships and dramatic conflicts dissolve into ham-fisted melodrama with no believability factor. The characters, excluding for a second that they are unlikeable stereotypes, we never do get to know, the pacing gets bogged down by the overly-serious tone and the direction also falls flat. Overall, Stonados is the sort of movie that we shouldn't take too seriously but when the movie itself takes itself too seriously it is difficult not to follow suit although you can't take what is thrown at you at face value. This is a case of trying too hard rather than not trying, but while there is far worse out there despite being from those behind Sharknado it wasn't very entertaining for me, sorry. 3/10 Bethany Cox
Review of Stonados
Stonados
(2013 TV Movie)
Think Sharknado but as a disaster movie with giant stones/rocks and you have Stonados
24 November 2013