Destruição Total: O Fim do Mundo

I watched this on TV last night - yes the whole mini series was shown in one block on Australian TV. The script was like ten different scripts thrown together (from the high winds perhaps?), and there were too many special effect disasters in the first 10 minutes, so there were no suspense built up over the next 3 hours. Jerky and hectic camera work and slow-mo in the middle of dialogue scenes does not create energy and excitement guys. It lacked any bridges between scenes, with people in Paris one second and then Washington DC the next. How many days/months/years was this set over? The lighting and makeup made every female character looked like she had acne and pre-mature aging, but surprisingly the males looked young and clear skinned. In fact it had a music video feel to it - but I don't want to watch a music video for more than 5 minutes. And some scenes were low budget copies of The Day After Tomorrow.

The only reason I wouldn't give this boring and nonsensical mish-mash 0/10 is that it had Cameron Daddo (an Australia ex-TV host) and Shannen Doherty in it. And which ever actor played the male preacher was a hoot. Oh, and it is funny to here the FEMA director outline how the department is the only one to save the day (made pre-Katrina).

Without spoiling it for you if you do end up watching it - the way they 'resolve' the climate change disaster that is threatening to destroy civilisation is just lamo.

2/10

Just terrible. A total waste of time. There were a surprising number of actors and actresses that I had previously thought were at least half-way decent, but for each of them, this is clearly their worst performance. Sadly, though, as bad as the acting was, it was the best thing this "movie" had going for it. This is doubly bad, as I am pretty sure the producers were banking on special effects to save the movie. But they were very disappointing, despite being the obvious focus of the film. In addition to their technical flaws, they fall into the recent trap of thinking that every big disaster scene must have some famous landmark in it. One or two can give you a sense of setting, constantly using landmarks gets really annoying. Worse, the special effects were poorly used, distracting one from the story, instead of adding to it. Which might have bothered me if the story wasn't so weak. The plot had holes you could drive a Mack truck through. And the worst part of the whole thing was the stupid lines they had. One prime example was one where a meteorologist was saying that he used to be able to count on certain things, like the fact that anything above a Category 5 storm was impossible. Well duh! The category 6 and 7 hurricanes that he talks about are impossible. You don't even have to know a thing about science beyond what the classifications are to know that. Category 5 hurricanes or tropical storms are anything with wind speeds above 155 mph. So no matter how strong the storm, it's still only Category 5 by definition. This is but one example of the bad dialog in the film. It's also an example of the science in the movie that is as bad as "science" in the presidential reports on global warming that this movie seems to be trying to satirize. An easy target, but it manages to fail miserably. Almost makes you wonder if they have the opposite agenda...

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") :-)

Ok first the good. The opening scene is cool. I mean, who doesn't want to see a pair of douchebaggy soccer fans get whipped against the Eiffel Tower like a couple of rag dolls? Who doesn't want to see a bunch of snotty French politicians get eaten by a 20ft laughing clown head? Who doesn't want to see the Eiffel Tower twisting around like that 90s dancing baby gif? 10 minutes into the flick I was on my 2nd bucket of popcorn.

Next we get a surprisingly sober initiation to the basic plot, which is even more surprisingly credible and quite prophetic, given the fact that the 2005 writers predicted the 2017 Trump Administration's reversal of all environmental safeguards (so we can all keep our jobs as coal miners). The film's premise is just as much political intrigue as it is mayhem flick: corrupt politicians bury years of environmental science warning us of doomsday, until one day it reaches critical mass and we get an apocalyptic wave of storms (not unlike the ones we had 6 months ago but with more murderous clown heads).

Gina Gershon makes a believable entrance as the new head of FEMA appointed mostly because the government needed a hot babe to do PR for the news cameras. She enters with an air of polite authority, yes a babe but intelligent and in control, actually a really good hero figure, dressed in a cool, conservative suit that makes the world as well as the audience take her seriously.

Oh but pay close attention to her wardrobe as the plot peels away (pun intended). Yes I have graphed a direct, scientific correlation between Gina Gershon's plunging neck line and the plunging credibility of this flick. As it gets lower & lower, as costume choices get tighter & tighter, as buttons come unbuttonier & unbuttonier--to the point where I was waiting for Gina to yell at the cameraman "Hey my eyes are up here!"--the plot turns into a serious case of WTF. The timeline gets compressed harder than Gina's cleavage, where one minute you'll have someone getting killed in a raging tsunami and, literally, the next scene is that person's funeral in the warm glow of sunlight, then back to panicked storm chasing, some random terrorists, a perfect marriage falling apart, politicians getting attacked by murderous frogs, and a totally bizarre plot element about a guy getting his arm stuck in a pipe 200ft up in the air while trying to fix the motherboard on his computer.

Did I miss anything? Probably. Because I was too damn distracted by Gina Gershon's neckline which is now down to her ankles.

Also I was distracted, to the point of epileptic seizures, by the hyper stylized, rapid fire, plain bizarre edits in the film which in 20 years will either be hailed as the greatest cinematic innovation since film noir, or just plain stupid.

But omg if you hadn't guessed, this movie is anything but boring. I mean, who doesn't want to see a trailer park get sucked into the sky as its residents scramble to rescue the plastic pink flamingoes from their doorsteps? Who doesn't want to see Tom Skerritt (Commander Dallas from the iconic scifi thriller "Alien") flying loop-de-loops in a $33 million SR-71 Blackbird... to save the world, you say? ...no, just to collect data which could've been more easily received by a weather satellite, except that weather satellites don't have the great Tom Skerritt flying loop-de-loops in them. Who doesn't want to see the great James Brolin (the dashing hero of "Capricorn One") doing the electric slide from the pulpit of a tv ministry? Who doesn't want to see, omg the best part, Randy Quaid playing the deathwish storm chaser from, I dunno Arkansas by the sound of his accent, basically a reprise of his hilarious role as the Winnebago guy in "Christmas Vacation"?

So there you have it, this movie has everything. Sort of like a pineapple anchovy m&m pizza has everything. I don't know whether to rate this flick a zero or a gobjillion.

"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".