Tempête de Météorites

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

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.

An astro-physicist is tapped by the government to figure out why the city of San Francisco is being besieged by anti-social meteorites. BB-sized pellets crash a meteor light show stargazing event, and victims run for cover. Immediately, scientists and the military team up to repel the onslaught.

Time out for obligatory clichés: Obnoxios dumbbell TV news crew getting in everybody's hair. General wants to nuke something. Hero guy is married to scientist, and they argue a lot. Their stupid brat kids blunder into perilous locations, always at the exact time and place meteors show up. Hero guy diverts from saving the world to rescue his idiot brat kids. The ratio of cliché stuff to actual plot elements is about 70% to 30%.

The pseudo-scientific ramblings about why San Fran is being singled out are actually pretty imaginative (although ludicrous). Acting is fair. Action and CGI are fair. 99% of the budget was invested in the 500th movie depiction of the collapse of the city's most famous structure. It's done in spectacular fashion; the film's blazing glory moment. But sloppy editing also gives you glaring goofs: like light traffic in the background of a scene, during a supposed massive evacuation of the Bay area. Some evac.

As cheaply done as it may be, it's amusing enough to make it entertaining.

I am a fan of disaster movies and sci-fi movies, unfortunately this was not good at either. Whilst the storyline has been seen before I thought the story unfolded reasonably well, however there was not much substance to it - or science for that matter.

The acting was fair, except I found myself never quite believing the actors - their reactions to situations etc did not fit. I don't know if that is the actors fault or the director but something wasn't quite gelling.

Certainly not the worst film I've seen and worth watching if you need to kill a couple of hours.

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.