The Movies is a fun game with lots of flaws. The most recent game from Peter Molyneux and Lionhead Studios, who’s eyes are always bigger than their stomach, seems to succeed and fail in equal parts.

I started writing a review of this game yesterday, but then I threw it out. If found myself describing every nook and cranny of the game just so I could complain about it. As amusing as my barbs may be, you don’t need a novel to know that The Movies isn’t everything it wants to be.

The Movies is a movie studio tycoon game mixed with an actual movie making option. In the tycoon portion of the game, you make scripts, hire actors, research new filming techniques, and so on. It’s all a lot of micromanagment that gets old after a while. The difficulty level isn’t too steep either. While it takes a good 20 hours to finish the main mode, it’s not a taxing time. Easy breezy mixed with displeasure.

The movie making option allows you to select from a library of sets, situations, and moods. Sometimes. You see, the option is very limited. You may be carrying a briefcase in one scene, but if you want to have an argument in the next scene you can’t put a briefcase in your actor’s hand. You need a to use a briefcase situation for that. A briefcase situation?

So you select your scenes, your actors film it, and then you can edit the film down. You can even add your own voice and lip sync your characters. Your final film can then be submitted online for all to see. All the editing is very sloppy, buggy, and frustrating.

The game is fun to mess with. If you have the time to deal with the limitations of making your own movie and the creativity to get around the stumbling blocks, you can have yourself a good time. I would recommend it. I just wish it were a better game. That’s an odd situation to be in.