Category 7 - Das Ende der Welt

You know, I thought CATEGORY 7: THE END OF THE WORLD was some cheesy B-movie style TV miniseries that had been made by one of the obscure cable channels when it debuted in the USA and probably seen by half a dozen people. Then I find out it bagged the highest viewing figures when it was first shown and was also nominated for an Emmy award. Er, did I see something different to everybody else? This is laughably, atrociously bad, a production that looks like it cost all of a hundred bucks and was made by a bunch of arrogant film school students. It's no different to the endless disaster movies churned out by the likes of the SyFy Channel, all of them bland, nondescript and indistinguishable from each other.

CATEGORY 7 contains four episodes which show America assailed by super storms and various other natural disasters, including (randomly) an invasion of poisonous frogs. The scenes of actual disaster are limited, but they're undeniably hilarious, utilising appalling CGI to show the destruction of famous landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore. It's like a Lego version of a Roland Emmerich movie. And, inevitably, the title is a misnomer: only the eastern seaboard of America is threatened, although apparently according to the filmmakers that's the whole world (or at least the only bit that matters).

To sustain the running time, there are various sub-plots about TV evangelists, religious nuts, a terrorist group and some kidnapped kids. The dialogue is ear-gratingly routine and the performances are lacking; it's one of those productions where you sometimes feel embarrassed for the actors involved. Gina Gershon, almost unrecognisable after extensive plastic surgery, headlines, and there are minor parts for Robert Wagner, James Brolin, Tom Skerritt, and others besides. Probably the most amusing turn comes from Randy Quaid, reprising his "wacky" turn from INDEPENDENCE DAY as a storm chaser. Sadly, the only reason to watch this is as an unintentional comedy, by which virtue it's funnier than most genuine comedies in cinemas at the moment.

It's not often I like the acting done by Shannon dougherty or randy Quaide, but I actually enjoyed both of them in this. It wasn't preachy like the previous film, just mindless entertainment for a day of boredom. Often times I just want a good bad movie to watch, something light-hearted, not intellectual, mind numbingly corny with some fun action and maybe some slightly sub par special effects. And this delivers in spades and goes a little above in this regard. I'm not a fan of the religious trope of the evil Christian but it was forgivable though advancing a second plot that wasn't horrible, just lacking a little on execution.

Ok first the good. The opening scene is cool. I mean, who doesn't want to see a pair of douchebaggy soccer fans get whipped against the Eiffel Tower like a couple of rag dolls? Who doesn't want to see a bunch of snotty French politicians get eaten by a 20ft laughing clown head? Who doesn't want to see the Eiffel Tower twisting around like that 90s dancing baby gif? 10 minutes into the flick I was on my 2nd bucket of popcorn.

Next we get a surprisingly sober initiation to the basic plot, which is even more surprisingly credible and quite prophetic, given the fact that the 2005 writers predicted the 2017 Trump Administration's reversal of all environmental safeguards (so we can all keep our jobs as coal miners). The film's premise is just as much political intrigue as it is mayhem flick: corrupt politicians bury years of environmental science warning us of doomsday, until one day it reaches critical mass and we get an apocalyptic wave of storms (not unlike the ones we had 6 months ago but with more murderous clown heads).

Gina Gershon makes a believable entrance as the new head of FEMA appointed mostly because the government needed a hot babe to do PR for the news cameras. She enters with an air of polite authority, yes a babe but intelligent and in control, actually a really good hero figure, dressed in a cool, conservative suit that makes the world as well as the audience take her seriously.

Oh but pay close attention to her wardrobe as the plot peels away (pun intended). Yes I have graphed a direct, scientific correlation between Gina Gershon's plunging neck line and the plunging credibility of this flick. As it gets lower & lower, as costume choices get tighter & tighter, as buttons come unbuttonier & unbuttonier--to the point where I was waiting for Gina to yell at the cameraman "Hey my eyes are up here!"--the plot turns into a serious case of WTF. The timeline gets compressed harder than Gina's cleavage, where one minute you'll have someone getting killed in a raging tsunami and, literally, the next scene is that person's funeral in the warm glow of sunlight, then back to panicked storm chasing, some random terrorists, a perfect marriage falling apart, politicians getting attacked by murderous frogs, and a totally bizarre plot element about a guy getting his arm stuck in a pipe 200ft up in the air while trying to fix the motherboard on his computer.

Did I miss anything? Probably. Because I was too damn distracted by Gina Gershon's neckline which is now down to her ankles.

Also I was distracted, to the point of epileptic seizures, by the hyper stylized, rapid fire, plain bizarre edits in the film which in 20 years will either be hailed as the greatest cinematic innovation since film noir, or just plain stupid.

But omg if you hadn't guessed, this movie is anything but boring. I mean, who doesn't want to see a trailer park get sucked into the sky as its residents scramble to rescue the plastic pink flamingoes from their doorsteps? Who doesn't want to see Tom Skerritt (Commander Dallas from the iconic scifi thriller "Alien") flying loop-de-loops in a $33 million SR-71 Blackbird... to save the world, you say? ...no, just to collect data which could've been more easily received by a weather satellite, except that weather satellites don't have the great Tom Skerritt flying loop-de-loops in them. Who doesn't want to see the great James Brolin (the dashing hero of "Capricorn One") doing the electric slide from the pulpit of a tv ministry? Who doesn't want to see, omg the best part, Randy Quaid playing the deathwish storm chaser from, I dunno Arkansas by the sound of his accent, basically a reprise of his hilarious role as the Winnebago guy in "Christmas Vacation"?

So there you have it, this movie has everything. Sort of like a pineapple anchovy m&m pizza has everything. I don't know whether to rate this flick a zero or a gobjillion.

Dialog such as this turns what CBS was hoping to be a grand spectacle of disaster into a comedy of disastrous proportions. This is filled with numerous technical errors that speaking as a weather hobbiest, can give non-informed people the wrong impression of the true power of nature. Take for example a TV weatherman reporting a "Category 5 Hurricane with gusts up to 150MPH". 150 MPH windspeed is considered to be Category 4 strength on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale and gusts of 150 MPH would indicate sustained winds of around 135 MPH. Category 5 winds start at 156 MPH (sustained) and go up from there. Hurricane Wilma, for example, had sustained winds of 175 MPH with gusts over 200. FYI, there is NO Category 6 or F6 classifications for storms for good reason. 5 is considered top of the scale, period. But CBS (or any of Big Media) won't let the facts get in the way of some good sensationalism. The rest of the story consists of standard disaster film clichés. I'll likely watch the conclusion, as this is like watching a train wreck... you just can't turn away. Rated 5 out of 10 for the unintentional laughs and for Randy Quaid (Cousin Eddie the "twister chaser") :-)

Just terrible. A total waste of time. There were a surprising number of actors and actresses that I had previously thought were at least half-way decent, but for each of them, this is clearly their worst performance. Sadly, though, as bad as the acting was, it was the best thing this "movie" had going for it. This is doubly bad, as I am pretty sure the producers were banking on special effects to save the movie. But they were very disappointing, despite being the obvious focus of the film. In addition to their technical flaws, they fall into the recent trap of thinking that every big disaster scene must have some famous landmark in it. One or two can give you a sense of setting, constantly using landmarks gets really annoying. Worse, the special effects were poorly used, distracting one from the story, instead of adding to it. Which might have bothered me if the story wasn't so weak. The plot had holes you could drive a Mack truck through. And the worst part of the whole thing was the stupid lines they had. One prime example was one where a meteorologist was saying that he used to be able to count on certain things, like the fact that anything above a Category 5 storm was impossible. Well duh! The category 6 and 7 hurricanes that he talks about are impossible. You don't even have to know a thing about science beyond what the classifications are to know that. Category 5 hurricanes or tropical storms are anything with wind speeds above 155 mph. So no matter how strong the storm, it's still only Category 5 by definition. This is but one example of the bad dialog in the film. It's also an example of the science in the movie that is as bad as "science" in the presidential reports on global warming that this movie seems to be trying to satirize. An easy target, but it manages to fail miserably. Almost makes you wonder if they have the opposite agenda...