Impact

Let's face it folks this is a low budget made for TV flick. I'm looking for entertainment and the premise of the moon hitting the earth is a spell-binding one.

It's also Sci-Fi so it's fine to stretch the facts. I'm a professional writer and will admit I'm a bit surprised there wasn't more research on the "real physics." A few hours with a Cal-Tech Professor would have cleared that up, especially regarding Kepler's Law and the difference between magnetism & gravity. But really who cares! If you want to know astrophysics, take a course at your local community college!

Anyway the movie is well paced and edited. Every scene advances the story line nicely. I didn't have time to pick apart details. CGI can be weak, but it gets the story told. Can you say the words, "LOW BUDGET." Despite "Impact's" fours hours the film never lost my attention. That's my definition of a "good, OK, film." I include the "sleepy factor" in rating pictures and I was wide awake for all 240 minutes.

Remember the Walt Disney quote, "The Plausible Impossible?" Sure fits here.

For a made for TV movie, it wasn't all that bad. Apart from the cheesy effects and bad acting, a good way to kill an afternoon while waiting for something better to come on. The worst part of this was the father. What lousy acting. No emotion or warmth. Much potential for a genuinely good story but much better suited to the big screen. The two leads were obviously hired for their looks, not their acting skills. Better actors would have made this a much better film. Despite this, suspend all belief and give it a shot. There is much worse out there. At least there's the beautiful Natasha Hentstridge to look at.

Hey, did anyone else notice that the patch on the general's sleeve was for the First Cavalry? What!?! Cavalry? Couldn't they at least have invented some bogus "Joint Astrospace Defence Command" patch?

I must admit, I didn't watch the movie intently: my wife was watching, and I would sit with her until the bogusness got too bad, then I'd go clean my closet or something. But I must also admit that I'm biased by my own history. I worked for NASA for 37 years, then taught high school for six, so the stunning level of bad science really grated on my sensibility. As someone noted, couldn't the writers have at least talked an amateur astronomer into critiquing the script. Maybe he could have explained the law of the conservation of momentum, and if the writers were quick studies, they might have progressed to complex topics like basic orbital mechanics.

There were redeeming features, of course. The little girl proved herself a fine young actress with her expressive face in that video conversation with her dad, and the grandpa was splendid, just as he was in "Babe". (I'd like to look for more of his movies to rent: I enjoy his work.) And, of course, all us old-timers know that all female space scientists are blonde, slender, very attractive, 30 to 35 years old, and possessed of big boobs. So they did get that part right.

Seriously, there should be no excuse for such bad science fiction on TV. Too much of the US population is nearly illiterate in science. And I am not talking about the kids in school now. This movie was shown in prime time, so was presumably intended for adult audiences. But this is the population who agree, in the majority, with the statement "early humans often had to defend their caves against marauding dinosaurs." And let's not forget there are politicians that claim to not believe the theory that is actually the fundamental guiding principle of contemporary biology. With a little more effort, some of the major flaws in the story could have been corrected and the audience might have gone away with a little better understanding of the underlying science. Yes, it's science FICTION, but fiction still needs internal self-consistency and a clear understanding of its own premises and their consequences. (Think "Jurassic Park" as a good example.)

Some of us have worked hard to educate this country in science, and seeing this movie is so discouraging, as if taunting us by saying we are never going to win.

I'm offering this movie a 5 because I feel generous. I mean at least, the kids were looking through the correct side of the telescope and they even depicted a meteor shower relatively accurately. Well, except that the full moon would have made watching a meteor shower much more difficult and that it appeared to be night time, simultaneously, everywhere on Earth. erroneously

Oh my... and did they really need to get a religious debate going in the first few minutes? Really? Was it necessary? Anyhow, this with all the other scientific talk... was mostly nonsense. BTW, Astronomers don't use telescopes to watch meteor showers! Another ridiculous moment is when Natasha Henstridge character kept stating she didn't understand something she clearly should have understood (hint: when an object takes on significantly more mass - Kepler's law clearly states what will happen. It is as if she and the other scientists are unaware of basic physics).

The meteorite hits were rather anticlimactic (read quite unrealistic).

What else did they get right (which helped earn the 5 out of 10)? - Meteorites vs Meteors (right) - Meteorites are not magnetic (mostly true)

Bottom line, this is just a story. Certainly, the events depicted could happen but the reality would be very different. I would have given this story a 7 out of 10 if it had ended at part 1. Part 2, while rather emotional, played out like any other disaster movie with a rather predictable ending.

Scientific inaccuracies abound as the moon gets shell-shocked by (ready?) a brown dwarf, making it heavier than the Earth, and causing freakish electro magnetitism, weird gravity, etc.

A guilty pleasure, for sure: I love these "the end of the world threatens" flicks where a bunch of scientists try to save us all from annihilation. It's definitely put your brain on hold stuff, but it's far superior to that "reality" rubbish and most of the other stuff on network TV. This flick "borrowed" elements from Armageddon and other movies, but at least it was free.

Considering the outlandish script, the acting was actually pretty good, including the child actors. The special effects were decent. Characters were clearly developed, and could be identified with. I actually felt sorry for the one that suffered from a debilitating phobia. The director did the most possible with the plot-hole-ridden story, and some of the weird stuff that happens is even fun to watch.

Cinematic fast food that's amusing, and doesn't cost a lot.