Tornado Warning

This movie of the week clears up many of the popular myths regarding tornados. You don't open all of the windows the "equalize the pressure"; you don't go a certain part of the house to escape the brunt of the tornados fury. The writers have certainly done their homework regarding the science of studying tornados. It also features refreshingly intelligent dialogue and believable female characters. While still fitting into the PAX network theme of 'family in peril', "Tornado Warning" manages to avoid many of the cliches and pitfalls that accompany this kind of movie. In addition, the performances by Gerald McRaney and Thea Gill are excellent - simple, clear and uncliched. Surprisingly good is David Milbern as the smarmy newscaster Kirk Reed. Usually this kind of part is played with moustache twirling cliche. Milburn imbues his character with a sticky charm that stays in your head after the movie is over. The only real drawback to this film is it's low-budget production design. It would have been nice to see the computer screen that the characters are looking at. However, this is a flaw in most lower-budget MOW's of this type. "Tornado Warning" is a promising opening for the PAX family network and is a good omen of things to come.

Made-for-TV movie TORNADO WARNING and its sister film produced for the same network and in the same year, ATOMIC TWISTER (2002), share identical special effects and cinematography. Both have one "stand out" female breast scene to help with youth marketing. Both contain stealth tornados that pop down in partly sunny skies and dissolve equally as quick.

Real tornados are born inside the rather specific storm cells produced by clashes of warm air masses and cold fronts. Severe thunder and lightning surround the funnel clouds whirling down from inside the DARK storm clouds.

These blue sky, lightning-free stealth twisters blowing down barns but unable to release drying laundry from a clothsline a few feet away (TORNADO WARNING) suffer from a lack of realism.

Sorry, but if I try to give people info that'll save their lives, and not only do they NOT wanna hear it, they take a dismissive attitude toward me, I'm not gonna risk jail or my own safety to keep trying to save them from themselves! Letting people like that die due to their own stupidity is natural selection at its very finest! In my version of the movie, the folks who do take the warning seriously shelter, and all the rest are pulled limb from limb by the twister. I'd certainly have all sorts of mannequin limbs with ketchup and other goo as part of the special effects *lol*. Gerald McRaney's talents were definitely wasted on this turkey of a film!

I thoroughly enjoyed "Tornado Warning". I watched with my husband and daughter and we were entertained the whole time. I thought it was well cast, funny where it should be, and a different take on other movies like it, such as "Twister", which I thought contrived and silly for a major motion picture. The action in this moavie was fun and engaging, and the writing was terrific. A must-see for any natural disaster fan!

The special effects, the acting, and the script were so bad that at times I couldn't figure out if this movie was a drama or just a bad comedy. The mayor was especially awful.

The special effects were pretty lousy, too. In one scene, the good guys are driving with the mayor following, yelling through her bullhorn that everything's alright. She then gets swept away. But a few moments later, down the same road, the tornado is seen about a mile away off in the field.

I'm sorry, but I was expecting a thriller and got a lame, unbelievable sci-fi pseudocomedy.