Category 6: Day of Destruction

Come on you guys--it's a dandy no brainer. Let yourself go. It's quite a ride. I loved the veiled references to George W. by Secretary Abbott and her assistant. Let business run riot and we get Enrons and all kinds of devious stuff. And regardless of John Stossel, the government is the only control we've got. A big part of any story is the actor's performances which I thought were quite well done. Some of the dialogue was corny but I imagine in the same circumstances it would be hard to come up with award winning comments. And that's part of the humanity of any story like this. I'm just mad that they had led me to believe that a flood was one of the results of the storm coming from the North and there was none. I wanted to see how they could get out of the many advices for citizens to head for secure main floors and basements with the flood coming. So they just chickened out.

I'll admit that having heard all these negative things about this 2 part movie, that it wasn't all that bad. It certainly wasn't as bad as I had expected but it also really wasn't too much good either.

The movie is filled with many stupid silly plot-lines. They are so all formulaic that none of them offers any surprises. On top of that, the dialog in the movie is absolutely horrible. At times it even manages to become laughable. This is the sort of typical dramatic disaster movie that features many characters in it, of which none really ever work out as an interesting or engaging one.

This movie isn't about natural disasters, this is about people and their personal problems. Now is that anything new or interesting? I mean, I've I wanted to follow a story like this I would watch a soap opera in stead. It's the sort of mistake "Deep Impact" and disaster movies in general often make. The movie at times tries to put in morale in about the environment and global warming and such but all those things come across as forced and look silly because of that in the movie.

It seems to take for ever before the introduction and build-up in the story stops. There is a lot of talking about natural disasters but not enough of it gets actually shown on the screen. The movie is too long on its drama.

The use of news archive material of bad weather conditions and tornadoes is too obvious. It makes the movie seem even more cheap and silly.

There are some good actors in the movie but even they can't make the movie work out fully- or the dialog. Randy Quaid, Dianne Wiest and Brian Dennehy are no small time actors. Guess they also regret being in this, looking back at it.

But the movie does a good job at keeping the pace high, even though when nothing is happening. For a made for TV production this really wasn't all that bad. I mean, I have seen far worse attempts. The movie was overall good looking, despite of the weak and cheap special effects. But I don't really see what's the big deal about it, since the special effects get never featured that prominently in the movie. I therefor also feel that some of the negativity toward this movie is for most part unjustified. Not that it deserves raving criticism but its a decent attempt that does not bore but just becomes too silly and unlikely in parts.

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Okay, so I enjoy a romp through destruction now and then - I'll admit it, I'm a disaster movie fan. That is, when the movie is ABOUT a disaster, NOT when the movie itself IS a disaster - BIG DIFFERENCE! My husband and I almost turned this off after the first hour of the first night, but decided to stick it out to see some potentially cool special effects. Okay, we got those. And then we felt compelled to watch the conclusion on Wednesday. Sloooooooooow. Boooooooooring. Not to mention stupid! I was pretty willing to overlook the paper-thin characters, lame dialogue, and clichéd, disjointed plotting. I was even mildly willing to overlook the damage done to the anti-global-warming cause. But in a movie where obviously somebody had enough computer smarts to give a realistic facsimile of the St. Louis Arch twisting and shouting, why wasn't there an equally savvy computer geek on hand to EDIT OUT THE PALM TREES from the stock footage dubbed in as "hurricane hits Chicago?" HELLO ALL YOU ON THE WEST COAST - last time I checked, Chicago was still located in the Midwest (you know, that "fly-over" country that produces most of YOUR food???), and guess what? There are no palm trees in the Midwest. SURPRISE!

Average film. Very routine formula film about a disaster.

There a few things going for it, and a few things against it.

Against it are the settings. Too many city shots, with buildings, motor vehicles, people in suits and ties, all that which makes for dull spectacle. There are some very trite situations, the young lady not taken seriously by a trite bespectacled wimp, the fascination with computers, the power plays that bore most people, the predictable outcome of the storm chasing moron.

For it, while the characters at first begin to sink into stereotypes, each one is brought out with at least one saving grace. Not sure if this saves the film, but it does show some semblance of style and intent to keep it from being too silly. We aren't left with too many predictable and trite results, and it still has entertainment value.

They covered everything... Badly. From special effects to facts. I kept watching because it was so bad. There's something to be said for bad, but not enough to make me want to watch part 2. I probably will though, just to see if it is as bad. Everybody was over the top. Actors that I usually like count on for good performances were terrible in this. Had any of the writers ever actually observe a real relationship between real people? I had a little trouble understanding how people in a city that was totally blacked out were able to watch news updates. Big business is bad. Government is good. The only people you can count on for honesty is the media. Throw everything you can think of at a camera and you've got yourself a movie. I think that must have been the philosophy behind this one.