Storm Cell

13-year-old April and 8-year-old Sean lose their parents in an Oklahoma tornado. At least the parents were trying to save someone's life.

Thirty years later, April is a published author and a professor at River Point University, supposedly in Oklahoma, since her daughter Dana is in high school in Wyattsville, Oklahoma. She is known as "Tornado Lady" because she is a storm chaser, and she lectures on how global warming has made the planet's weather more violent.

April takes Lew, a student newspaper reporter, out on one of her adventures. Little does she know that this one will involve her daughter Dana, who is rehearsing "Romeo and Juliet" at her high school.

What happens when April and Dana meet is truly shocking.

Sean is the sheriff of Shiloh Hills, outside Seattle. His wife Molly is pregnant, and she invites April and Dana to visit. Dana is basically a good kid, but she has an attitude and doesn't want to go. April persuades Dana to come along by pointing out that Garfield College has a great drama program and Dana might want to go there.

The last thing Dana wants is for this to be yet another of her mother's adventures. But it just so happens that the Seattle area is about to get hit with the worst storm systems in its history. Unbelievable hail, tornadoes like the area has never seen. Oh, by the way, April went to college with Travis, a TV meteorologist in Seattle.

Dana is constantly arguing with her mom, but she does have some fun, as it turns out. While in Washington she meets Ryan, the bad-boy son of a local developer who is being harassed because he doesn't build houses up to code. (The father is being harassed for his business practices; the son for his overall behavior.)

Sean and April don't get along, because April doesn't think Sean is grieving enough for the parents they lost thirty years ago, and because Sean left Oklahoma. He is not affected in the least when he sees a mother of a young boy who has died--at least not enough for her.

There is occasional excitement, especially toward the end, and it's not all because of the tornadoes. Even at the end, though, the dialogue leaves something to be desired.

Elyse Levesque is beautiful and has her moments (no, playing Juliet is not one of them), but I don't think anyone will win awards for this movie. Mimi Rogers is pretty for her age.

The visual effects are impressive for about five seconds, and for a little longer in the final scenes. I guess the budget was limited.

But for scientific accuracy this movie falls short. Is a storm system that produces tornadoes supposed to resembled a hurricane in satellite photos? Not unless it was a hurricane to begin with. This one seems to have come in from Canada, and even if it formed over water, hurricanes don't form off Seattle. Yes, I know, global warming. Weather is supposed to have gone crazy.

Also, Travis' weather maps don't make sense. I've been looking at how warm fronts and cold fronts are supposed to be drawn. If the fronts are depicted accurately, this is wacky weather. Besides, I thought cold fronts were supposed to be blue and warm fronts red, not the other say round. But then these fronts aren't behaving how they're supposed to.

Is it worth seeing? Well, I had a good enough time.

This one hurt. And I'm usually a sucker for really bad Twister ripoffs made for cable. We've seen this plot before, twice. Estranged parent-child relationship, because said parent is too devoted to chasing that big storm. Parent is obsessed with storms because of a tragedy in their childhood. Parent predicts The Big One will hit right where estranged child lives. Child doesn't believe them. Child has has several tense emo moments with parent. Big tornado predictably hits, key characters survive, and everyone is happy. See "Devil Winds" and "Tornado Warning" for this by -the-numbers plot as well. Amusingly, they use global warming for an excuse to "move" Tornado Alley to the pacific northwest so they could shoot cheaply in Vancouver. As expected, the tornado effects are lackluster. The CGI crew just rendered the same tornado for every scene. I think what really got to me was the darkness of the movie. By that I do not mean a grim undertone to the story... but rather how literally dark the image was throughout. I spent a lot of time straining to make out various details like character faces and locales. The environment around a tornado can be very dark, but this was done throughout the movie. I can only recommend this to people who didn't think it could get any worse than Atomic Twister.

I'm a storm chaser, which means I'm usually avid for any sort of storm-disaster movie, no matter how stupid. But this one not only wasted the fifteen minutes I spent watching it, it's compelling me to waste yet more time writing this review. That's how strongly I feel about it.

In this day and age, with so many weather websites available, there's no excuse whatsoever for a writer not to go see what a tornado looks like on radar--clue: It's not a hurricane! And FYI, storms do not growl. Chasers and storm fans and TV watchers, oh my, do yourself a favor and rent Twister again instead.

The actor's cell their soul-making this movie. Mimi Rogers. Playing April overacts (almost like a silent movie) as a storm chasing global warming fanatic. It is enough to give storm chasers a bad name. April has stormy eyes that flash of the sound of lies.

Sometimes this movie can be hail.

Elyse Levesque gets to play Dana the drama queen. Her character needs to be eaten by a crocodile, oops, wrong movie, a twister of fate.

Michael Ironside with over 250 credits gets to play James the evil building developer who wants to make a buck at everyone's expense.

We have to listen to dramatic trauma music all through the movie. It may be worth it to turn the sound off and use "closed caption".

Sit back and watch while eating your funnel cake.

first off the teenage girl in this movie was so irrating and annoying the tornado should have taken her. with that being said the rest of the movie wasn't bad to watch at all, now everyone needs to watch this with a grain of salt because after seeing movie's like twister, and night of the twisters. how much more innonvative and new can you get. Mimi Rogers does an okay job with it.. there is some excellent tornado footage, and some characters that are worth caring about in this movie. there is some neat newsroom , weather related stuff that was cool to look at,, didn't care so much for the love interest stuff between the characters,, mainly what I liked was about the chase and how is everyone gonna find a way to get to safety,, find a shelter,, lowest level in you're home.. not a bad TV movie, right about average.