Twister

Twister has groundbreaking special effects, some of which still hold up, great sound design and is packed with visceral thrills.

I thoroughly enjoyed TWISTER! I saw it in theaters and was completely blown away! (No pun intended.) I loved the big, loud, thrilling action sequences and the fun characters. Although most people criticize the writing as being poor, I actually thought most of it was quite clever. Unlike worse action movies, you actually understand the characters' personality.

The cast is great! Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz, Lois Smith, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Anthony Rapp, and the rest of the cast (as well as Jan De Bont, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Crichton) make this an entertaining and educational movie!

Twister, one of the most successful movies of the 90's, mainly due to it's special effects and a lot of people's want for a natural disaster movie that is fun to watch, this was an extremely popular movie. I was only 11 when the movie was released and I was absolutely in love with it, in fact right after the movie was done, I wanted to become a storm chaser. That's how much I loved this movie; I grew up and forgot about the movie and decided on a new career. But I saw the DVD on sale and thought about how much I enjoyed the movie when I was younger, I'm sure it would be just as much fun to see it again. I have to say this wasn't as awesome as I remembered, in the theater it was like "Oh, my God! Look at that flying cow! A house just flew across the road! That is so cool!", now on my TV screen I was like "Oh, wow, look at that cow. How the heck does a house fly across the road? Why isn't this as cool as I remembered it?" Not to mention that the story wasn't as good as I remembered, granted I know that they had to fit in some kind of story with the whole plot of the twisters, but a lot of this movie is just plain unrealistic.

In June 1969 on an Oklahoma farm a tornado warning is issued, the family seeks shelter in a storm cellar as an F5 tornado strikes. However, the storm is so strong that the locks on the cellar door fail and the father is caught up in the storm and killed as his daughter struggles to catch a glimpse of the powerful storm. Years later, Dr. Jo Harding, the father's daughter, is reunited with her estranged husband; Bill Harding. Bill is a former weather researcher and storm chaser who has taken a job as a weather reporter. He is planning to marry his new girlfriend, Dr. Melissa Reeves, and arrives at Jo's research lab seeking Jo's signature for the final divorce papers. Bill discovers that Jo has built a tornado research device called DOROTHY based upon his own design; the device is designed to release hundreds of sensors into the center of a tornado to study its structure. The team later meets up with Dr. Jonas Miller, a smug and unscrupulous fellow meteorologist and storm chaser. When Bill discovers that Jonas has "invented" a device almost identical to DOROTHY; he vows to help Jo deploy DOROTHY before Miller can claim credit for the idea. Bill and Melissa join Jo and her eccentric team of storm chasers. Tensions rise between Jo and Bill when they have several close calls with dangerous tornadoes as they try unsuccessfully to deploy the new device.

So how does Twister hold up over these years? Not so well, the effects are still amazing, but that's about it. I do have to admit, even though it's a bad movie, I still enjoy it like crazy. I think because if you let go of how unrealistic it is, you can just have fun with that want of destruction and chaos. Granted I know this movie is a bit stupid: our two leads, Bill and Jo, survive the impossible facing an F5 twister, the twisters always disappear as our "hero's" are in danger, Bill's fiancé puts up with quit a bit before realizing that he is a jerk for putting her through all the danger with him, Jo, a scientist, thinks that tornado's are serial killers, and not to mention that this was a record breaking day with numerous twisters. But still as bad as the acting, as bad as the story, as stupid as some of these situations may be, it's still a fun movie to watch and I think I wanna be fair with the rating just because it is mindless entertainment. It's a classic 90's disaster movie and besides, it has flying cows, what other film will give you that kind of situation? But it's all good I think they were taking the cows to McDonald's anyways.

7/10

This film is not high cinematic art. It was intended to be a summer blockbuster "put your brain on hold" action film when it was released in 1996, and that is what it was and still is. Its competition at the time was "Independence Day", which is an unwatchable hokey movie, and this movie is better than that film in that it is a watchable hokey movie. Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton play recently divorced storm chasers Jo and Bill Harding whose relationship was pulled apart by Jo's obsession with chasing tornadoes to the exclusion of wanting any kind of "normal family life" by Bill's definition. Bill has moved on and found a more conventional girl that he plans to marry (Jami Gertz). However, before he can move on, Bill needs Jo to sign some papers. He meets her "in the field" as she and her team from the university plan a day of chasing tornadoes through Oklahoma. Before they can conclude their business a storm calls the team to the chase, and Bill is drawn into the chase by necessity but kept there by his latent passion - for storm-chasing and maybe even for the marriage he left behind. The film features some great special effects, fast-paced action, and cringingly obvious dialog with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. However if you're just in the mood for an action-packed film with a feel-good after effect, this movie fits the bill.

The current rating of 6/10 is probably correct if you are comparing Twister with Casablanca. If you judge it as an action film against other action films, I'd say it's probably more of a 7 out of 10.

I like disaster movies when they are done right, and while Twister is no masterpiece it is a sort of guilty pleasure for me. I agree the script has its weak spots, the pace is rather pedestrian and the plot on the clichéd and unrealistic side of things. But Twister is nostalgic fun, with some decent direction and acting, complete with some pretty incredible special effects. The cinematography and scenery are also pretty good, and the score is effective.

Overall, Twister is no masterpiece in any shape or form, but to me it was fun and a guilty pleasure in some ways. While it could have been better it could have been much worse as well. 7/10 Bethany Cox