YMMV / Stormbreaker

• Can't Un-Hear It: Despite the failure of the film, the casting choices of Bill Nighy as Blunt and Sophie Okonedo as Mrs Jones are often widely praised as completely nailing the original characters.
• Complete Monster: Darius Sayle plots to use his Stormbreaker computers to release a deadly virus to kill millions of schoolchildren all over Britain, in retaliation for being bullied at school as a child for being a foreigner. When he discovers that security guard Ian Rider is actually a spy sent to find out about his plan, he has him killed by Yassen Gregorovich, and when Ian's nephew Alex is caught as well, Darius has him thrown into his aquarium tank to be killed by his pet man o' war. When the control to activate the Stormbreakers at the launch party is destroyed, he tries to activate them himself with an override, and tries to kill Alex and his school crush Sabina Pleasure when they try to stop him.
• Funny Moments: Always mixed with Narm.
  • Alex receiving a Nintendo DS with games that secretly have various useful functions. And he gets Mario Kart DS... just 'cause.
  • Nadia's death... underneath a giant jellyfish.
• Ham and Cheese: Missi Pyle is really camping it up as Nadia - laying on a thick German accent and being quite over-the-top in parts. But she's clearly having a good time doing so.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Alex, played by Alex Pettyfer stands behind a giant label '4' in Cornwall. He is Number Four.
  • Sarah Bolger ends up as a Damsel in Distress in the climax. In The Spiderwick Chronicles two years later, she plays a character who was a damsel in the books but becomes an Adaptational Badass.
  • Damian Lewis playing a secret agent is very amusing to fans of Homeland.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of Irish audiences tuned in just to see In America actress Sarah Bolger in a blockbuster role.
• Moral Event Horizon: Sayle crossed it when he revealed he was going to kill millions of completely innocent schoolchildren with the R-5 virus just because he was bullied as a child. He crossed it even further by ordering Alex thrown in the jellyfish tank and throwing Sabina off the roof of his tower. Alex catches her, but even so.
• Narm: The Jack-Nadia fight scene. The fact that it's intercut with cartoon footage playing on a TV and is so generally chaotic and poorly choreographed kills all possible tension and just makes it really funny. Guess Alicia Silverstone just wasn't meant for action.
• One-Scene Wonder: Stephen Fry shows up for one sequence supplying Alex with his gadgets, and of course is very memorable.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • While she had attracted lots of press for In America, Sabina's actress Sarah Bolger would become far better known for her television roles in The Tudors, Into the Badlands, Once Upon a Time and Agent Carter.
  • Wolf, Alex's comrade in boot camp, is played by Ashley Walters - who was known for his music career (under the name Asher D) - but is now better known as an actor in Top Boy and Bulletproof.
  • Damian Lewis did have the critical acclaim from starring in Band of Brothers, but it hadn't done as well in live airings and would take a few years to acquire its strong fan base. He's of course more recognisable for Homeland, Billions and Wolf Hall.
• Uncertain Audience: Better With Bob? puts forth the suggestion that the film was released during a time when the spy genre was slowly transitioning away from the Camp and goofiness of the latter James Bond entries (the most recent at the time of filming was the widely panned Die Another Day) - but it had not fully undergone a Reconstruction, and therefore Stormbreaker tries to be two films at once; a child-friendly Affectionate Parody of spy thrillers, and a Deconstruction of the Kid Hero like the books eventually became. The result was a film that was too sanitized to go deep enough with its deconstruction and therefore added nothing new, as well as not being spectacular enough to be enjoyable escapism.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Alex's hair alone immediately dates this movie to the 2000s. But the then-state of the art technology includes no smartphones and very obvious 2000s flip phones - and they think they'll be able to pass Alex off as a contest winner purely with an altered magazine cover, and no mention of social media profiles etc. Alex is also given a Nintendo DS, with then-current releases.

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