Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 06/20/2012 at 2:29 PM News

The Popdust Files: rihanna, upcoming movies

Battleship was not a great movie. Even the more generous stances on the film (the word “film” seems really weird here) read like “it’s much better than a movie based on a plotless board game could have been, but come on.” That went for Rihanna’s performance, too; almost nobody thought she ruined the movie, because her role wasn’t big enough to. Another thing Battleship was not? Rihanna’s first and last movie. That gate is open. There will be more Rihanna movies, probably (at least for now) along the same lines. And thus: Happy Smekday!

Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

This is how Rihanna celebrates Smekday: with the same expression she uses to sing.

Happy Smekday! is an animated film based on Adam Rex’s children’s book The True Meaning of Smekday, which is loosely about an alien and a teenage girl on some sort of post-apocalyptic journey. (Every teen must come of age with aliens.) It stars Jim Parsons, best known for playing Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, and the aforementioned Rihanna, who will be voice-acting for the first time but complete recorded dialogue includes such extensive preparation like “Get up, princess! Come on,” “Lieutenant” and “Mahalo, motherfu–!”. (Well, OK, the “We Found Love” monologue probably counts too.)

Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Do you ever wonder, when people take pictures of Rihanna, if she ever imagines herself saying any of that stuff to the cameras again? This looks like a "mahalo, motherfuckers" photo, right?

Our stance on this is probably going to be more or less the same as our stance on Woolly Drake and Nicki in Ice Age: Sequel Continental Drift–i.e. best seen in supercut form–but good on Rihanna for landing a major role and not a supporting-soldier type. If nothing else, the Big Bang Theory fandom will have mashup material for months.