O Dia em Que o Mundo Pegou Fogo

Everything in this movie is absolutely shocking. Ridiculous scenarios, stupid characters, mundane dialogue, if it's bad, this movie has it. But the funniest thing in this movie has to be the massive errors in geography. As has already been pointed out, no one in Sydney seems to have an Australian accent; they're all British, American or badly pseudo-Australian. One viewer pointed out that Australia doesn't have the death penalty; not quite true. You can still be executed for treason in Australia, but that's it; mass murderers spend the rest of their lives in prison. Also, the term "recitles" is never used in Australia to denote a musical or drama performance done by school kids (at least not in Adelaide, where I come from). This is an Amreican term that the American makers of this film clearly assumed would be used everywhere else in the world. However, there was another howler that had me in stitches. A section of the film is supposedly set in the Maldives. The Maldives lie no more than six metres above sea level, yet there are gigantic mountains covered in lush rain-forests. Obviously, no research went into these geographic aspects of the movie.

I'm sorry the science is bad. I'm sorry it wasn't filmed in Australia and they got a lot of accents and details wrong. I'm sorry some people don't think much of the acting.

But I really enjoyed the scenery. It was well photographed. The acting was decent and the women were nice to watch.

All in all, It was a pleasant flick to spend a rainy afternoon on.

What can I say about this? Well, firstly, there is no need for me to give a summary of this mini-series when people can just easily refer to the standard disaster film formula: smart guy with all the answers, pretty but tough woman, cute kid, corrupt government agent/politician/business man who is only interested in some greedy proposition and some CGI effects. There isn't a sweet little dog that, of course, survives deadly situations but the script writer does toss in a serial killer who escapes. There are also destruction by meteors that seem to be intelligent with the way they just know how to land on structures of significance ('Oh look, there's the Taj Mahal- let's blow it up. There's the Sydney Opera House- get it! Look the scientist who can set everyone straight; he has to go!').

Basically, 'Supernova' has been done many times before and the previous efforts have been much superior. The science behind the concept is so ridiculous that they resort to techno-babble in the hopes the audience won't notice. Although the story is supposedly set in Australia, the director and the actors don't seem to know this and are confused whether the location should be America, Australia, the UK or South Africa (the shift in scenery and accents just gets irritating after the first half-hour). While one can't blame the CGI effects for being far from great given the lower budget of the series, this could have been avoided if it hadn't bothered to show off.

What could have save 'Supernova' was if the plot was solid and the characters were interesting but it didn't even have that. The characters were so flat and uninspiring that they just left the audience praying that sun would just swallow these people up, and the plot was tedious and too drawn-out.

If you want a disaster film, stick with 'The Day After Tomorrow' or 'Independence Day'. They too may be predictable but they know it and do it well!

The Hallmark Network has chosen to create a series of movies to supplement their "Hall of Fame" product. They are off to a decidedly mixed start with "Supernova." Certainly, their timing could not have been worse, given events in New Orleans. Too bad they couldn't have scheduled another film for this time.

"Supernova" would a made a pretty good two hour disaster movie. Cut out the "dime store" space special effects and the trite "serial killer" subplot and you'd have something pretty memorable. Unfortunately, the "solar flare" effects look about as realistic as Disney 2D animation. While not particularly surprising, given the limited effects budget for TV fare, the bad "space effects' contrast jarringly with the pretty good "earth effects" on display.

Peter Fonda plays, flatly, a world famous astronomer who predicts the sun will go supernova (enlarge, then explode) within a month (or, was it a week). Luke Perry plays an astrophysicist(!), also flatly, and is the principal protagonist. Lance Henriksen plays his stock baddie. The women come off much better in the acting department, most notable are Tia Carrere (as a government agent), Emma Samms (as a crusading TV news commentator), Clemency Burton-Hill (as a scientist) and an unnamed actress who plays Fonda's bartender-squeeze.

Jettison an hour and "Supernova" would be good enough for a "7". As presented, however, it barely squeaks by as a "5".

Oh where to begin? Leaving the incredibly bad science out of it (and believe me, as a former astronomer I gotta say the science was so bad!), the people who made this movie did obviously NO research on what Australia is supposed to look like.

Not only did just about everyone have an American accent (and most of those who affected an Aussie accent need to fire their dialect coach), but just about every detail was way, way off. I could handle some of the small stuff (i.e. phone numbers here have 8 digits, not 7), but they got some pretty major stuff wrong too.

Whlle the cars were at least driving on the left, they all had the wrong kind (possibly European) of licence plates. Aussie plates don't look anything like what they had. Imagine a movie set in New York where all the cars had bright pink tags.

But the BIGGEST blunder that anyone who had ever set foot on this continent would recognise: Australia doesn't have the death penalty. Like in most civilised nations, it was abolished years ago. This was a major plot point in the movie, and if they had bothered to do a lick of research, they would have known they needed a major rewrite.

Sloppy