Meteor Storm

Does anyone really think that the local director of and emergency management agency would be able to do their job during an emergency while they were spending most of their time getting family members out of emergency situations? Would the responses of the other people involved in that emergency to a director of an emergency agency doing this be as supportive as in this movie? Whoever wrote this plot has no understanding of the difficulties encountered in emergency management and didn't do any research on it.

The 'science' was rubbish. Electrostatic attractions are only effective over short distances, they do not have an 'frequency' associated with them (as implied by the 'static' part), and like charged substances repel, rather than attract. Even if the authors couldn't pass high school science they should have done the research on this.

The saving graces of the movie are the special effects and, to some degree, the actors. The director and technical staff also seemed to be competent. The writers do not appear to have been competent.

SyFy movies are never going to win awards with their limited budgets and their hastily-written scripts, I realize that. Still, I think that if they had approached this project with some smarts, it could have been a decent time-killer. As it is now, it isn't. For a Canadian production, it looks decent (it doesn't have that "Canadian look"), but it still has a made-for-TV feel to the visuals, and the various British Columbia locations simply can't be passed off as San Francisco. Some of the special effects are okay, but they mostly look cheap and unconvincing, which is probably why long stretches of time go by between special effects shots. But it's the script that really sinks this movie. It's long and drawn out, which is why there is no feeling of tension, and the characters aren't really fleshed out enough. Director Tibor Takács has made some good movies in his career, but "Meteor Storm" is not one of them.

Before any one watches this movie they have to understand that it is a SyFy production, which means no academy awards, modest budgets, and fictitious science used to explain what is happening.

As a fan of the SyFy movies (mostly as they are the only regular source of science fiction on TV now days)I would have watched it regardless, but this film was a pleasant surprise.

The cast was surprisingly good based on the type of film, all science fiction regulars led by Battlestar alum Michael Trucco, Invasion and Covert Affairs beauty Kari Mitchell, Kyle XYs Kirsten Prout and Smallville and Flash Gordon star Eric Johnson, all of whom are playing to their strengths (eg Johnson as a cocky, arrogant reporter). All performed well, though Trucco was a little stiff.

A typical weakness in SyFy flicks are the CG effects. Fortunately, as the story really only called for meteors falling from the sky the cost would have been limited allowing for some generally decent effects. The first meteor storm was very well done.

Another typical weakness of SyFy films is the script/ dialogue. While there are some cheesy lines 'That might explain the Bay Area's historically bad cell phone service', there are some good lines too, my favourite being when Michelle is being asked to go with the army person who says 'Say yes while I'm still asking, Michelle'.

This is a decent flick for a wet Friday night. Certainly not a blockbuster, and there a holes in the plot and the science of the film, but if you can ignore them and just watch the movie as escapism and entertainment there are certainly worse films you could watch instead.

Of all the films I have seen of Syfy and on the Syfy channel, Meteor Storm is not one of the best, though I have yet to see a Syfy movie that I would deem good. But it is not as bad as Titanic II, Mega Piranha, Shark Attack and that Moby Dick movie they did. To be honest, Meteor Storm is nothing to rave about, but unlike the movies I have cited the acting while again not award-worthy was tolerable, particularly from Michael Trucco. The film is not visually stunning by any regard as the editing is rather slip-shod and the effects are largely inconsistent, but there are much cheaper productions out there. Despite these, there are a lot of things in this movie that I don't like about Syfy in general. A major problem is the plot, if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be nonsensical. The ideas put forward are somewhat imaginative and intriguing, but explained and executed ridiculously. The script is clichéd, illogical and just plain bad really, the characters are cardboard and I didn't really connect to them, the pace is uneven with a dull middle section and the less said about a vast majority of the direction the better. All in all, there have been worse, but this is not really something to savour on repeat viewings and such. 2/10 Bethany Cox

I don't need to repeat everything other reviewers noted, but maybe a few:

1. Every disaster flick cliché ever imagined was included. 2. Soldiers, even airmen, don't salute civilians -- except those in direct line of command like the SecDef and the CINC (President). 3. The science is pure hokum. Radio frequencies don't cause attraction or repulsion. If you're gonna blow up stuff in outer space, do it before it starts to heat up from atmospheric friction.

And then a couple no one has as yet mentioned:

4. Brigaders are about as high up the food chain as amoebas. A BG who gets the President on the phone is a joke. 5. I think that element 120 should have been named unbelievium. 6. Toward the end, Keri Matchett who plays the professor (the one who does qualitative analysis by looking through a microscope for Pete's sake) spends the last reel, rather than looking scared, concerned, or dispirited, with a sly smile on her face, as if she knows something none of the rest of us do. Well, she was wrong. A lot of us realized just how silly this whole thing was.