Category 7: The End of the World

OK sorry wrong movie......that was "Twister"....and this movie had more than its share...Global warming has sprouted global storms of gigantic proportions and its FEMA to the rescue with the help of a few other folks as the storms head for Washington. Gina Gershon leads the cast that includes Shannon Doherty and Randy Quaid reprising his role from "Category 6" in which his "Tommy Tornado" character was swept away in a twister....and yes he lived to tell the tale...I gotta say the first half of this movie was a loud, shaky fast cut editing mish mash that left me with a headache. Filmmakers can you please leave the "NYPD Blue" shaky camera style alone already!!!!That is the most annoying style of film making and I guess they felt it was just right for this disaster flick but it just became a distraction for me. Now what surprised me, aside from the fact that I actually watched the second half, is that the second half actually entertained me with its storms of doom in almost every frame and our heroes running about in the mix of it all. Another pleasing factor was Andrea Lui who I suspect could be Lucy Lui's little sister who gives us a little bit of her take on "Charlies Angels" as she rescues her boy toy from the perils of the storm. That had to be a wink from the makers. All in all the 2nd half was better for me than the first and thats not saying too much. Geez if you ain't gotta nothing better to do then just sit back and watch the world end...well kinda, sorta, and don't expect too much...

Ooooooook - I read every review posted here, and I gotta tell ya, almost all are WAY off the mark. For one thing, this movie was BRILLIANT. How many other film makers have the GUTS to deliver, with gusto, a throw-back-to-the-80's-made-for-TeeVee-movie, complete with a plot and hundreds of sub-plots so improbable, you don't have to suspend your disbelief, you have to brutally murder it? What great fun! The special F/X? You mean like the PLEASE-DON'T-NOTICE-THE-STORY-LINE shots of waves destroying the Statue of Liberty, for instance? Let me just say, that without that standard-stock, must-include destruction of Lady Liberty, the film makers would have been crucified for not including it. If you're going to wipe out New York, that statue has to be one of the first things to go. Otherwise, you lose credibility on an oh, say Category 9.33 scale...

James Brolin must have been THRILLED to get that part...and electrocuting him, the voice of all things unholy about preachers, was also a default requirement. If you're gonna do a movie about natural disaster, Christians have GOT to die, and they must deserve to.

Tell you what I LOVED about the script - well - a couple of things.... First, our hero's wife seems REALLY OBSESSED over hubby having an affair....the world may be ending, Buffalo NY may be in the midst of becoming God's personal pick-up-sticks playground, but baby, we are going to talk about you and HER right now!!! And WOW - you had to LOVE the whole kidnapping angle as the families were whisked away from their Magical Mystical Tour of a collapsing NYC. Again, if you don't wedge in some utterly impossible, completely off-the-wall sub-plot like a well-organized, highly efficient kidnapping of CHILDREN that took less than a couple of hours to actually plan and pull off, you risk losing your SAG card. KUDOS!!!

***NOTE***I've sat in on a few script writing sessions for series television, and in defense of writers, I can tell you they more often than not are forced to write scripts like this one, despite their protests. So give the PRODUCERS (and the network)the credit here - it's well-earned, I'm sure.

The choppy camera work, the slow motion, all of it was in PERFECT HARMONY with the quality of work expected for this endeavor. The film crew will feel like it's virtually raining Emmy's...they, in turn, can thank the EDITORS for this gift, who can in turn thank the DIRECTOR, who like as not is right now sitting in his 7th grade drama class, wondering where it all went so wrong....

Rockets, a fighter jet with an octogenarian at the controls, and a hero who works in his garage with a bunch of high school drop outs to save us from THE END OF THE WORLD all made this a delightful film. For the finale (which I will TIVO so I can watch it over and over), I am going to wear my double knit polyester disco clothes, mute the sound, and spin up some Bee Gees for my own musical score.

Then, mercifully, about the time the requisite speech from someone begins about the ills of SUV's, my alarm will go off, and I'll awaken to the sound of thunder....

Having suffered through four hours (if you count commercials) of one of the most ambitious, yet disappointing disaster movies of recent times, I have but one observation to make: It is obvious that none of the writers, directors, or producers have ever experienced a real hurricane. I was okay with the tornado mega-storm stuff, even though that was all a stretch, but the "Category Seven" event produced by the combination of the super cell and Hurricane Eduardo (or whatever) was laughable, to say the least. Honestly, you would think that in a year when we have seen the devastation of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, the writers would have at least picked up some real-world hurricane facts by watching the Weather Channel! First, as racerx70 pointed out in a previous posting, they couldn't even get something as simple as the wind speeds right. They said the hurricane had winds of 150mph, which is definitely a Cetrgory 4, albeit a strong one. A "Category 7," however, even if that rating existed, would probably have sustained winds in the 200mph range, and no one would be able to move around DURING THE STORM like those people did. Secondly, where was the rain? Other than what looked like someone driving through a car wash as the hurricane was approaching, the streets were dry in all the subsequent shots. A "Category 7" storm composed entirely of dry air? (Maybe the winds were so strong the rain evaporated!) Third point: How about all the untaped, unboarded, unshuttered glass windows that survived a "Category 7" hurricane without so much as a crack? I loved that part! There were so many shots of the Senator in his office during the height of the storm with the intact, uncovered windows behind him, not to mention all the ones in the laboratory that were equally unprotected and unscathed. (I guess it was a UN-directional hurricane.) The last point that convinces me the writers have no idea of what goes on in a hurricane: The heroes were concerned about talking the powers-that-be to shut off the electricity in DC to rob the storm of fuel. Like they had a choice!!! Do you people (writers, producers) have any idea of what "150 mph" winds do to utility poles, lines, trees, etc., and how quickly power is one of the first things to go when a hurricane hits? Imagine what winds gusts in excess of 200 mph would do? Bottom line: I enjoy a good disaster flick, even ones as far-fetched as this one (and The Day After Tomorrow), and I know something like this requires a great deal of imagination and creativity, but at least do a little research before selling something this big to a major network to broadcast over two nights! (I wonder what the people in Florida and along the Gulf Coast thought of this, assuming that they have power from the last hurricane.)

"Category 6" was arguably the worst TV mini-series I ever forced myself to watch. "Category 7" is a worthy successor. It crassly capitalizes on recent tragedies. The acting is up to the level of the writing.

"Category 7" avoids being boring. There's some good camera work. The destruction of life and property is good clean fun for the whole family.

Does it have a message? No. Is it worth watching? Not unless you're really hard up. If you're watching the news some evening and real life leaves you wanting more mayhem without the sense of loss or suffering, this could be just what you're looking for.

It does remind me what I'd love to see some day is a screen adaptation of John Barnes "Mother of Storms".

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") :-)