Storm Cell

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.

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.

STORM CELL is a bad disaster movie even by TV movie standards. It stars Mimi Rogers (THE X-FILES) as a dedicated storm chaser who must fight against time to save her family from a series of super-powerful twisters that threaten to wreck much of middle America, yet the film fails to build on that premise at any point.

Due to budgetary constraints, no doubt, this film ends up more as a family drama than a disaster flick. Much is made of Rogers' obnoxious and stuck-up teenage daughter who keeps getting herself into peril, to the degree that I was hoping Rogers would simply cut her losses and forget about the dumb kid; no such luck.

Meanwhile, a few scenes show a twister wreaking havoc on some homesteads with the aid of some dodgy CGI. The two plots never gel, there's no plan on the part of the heroes, they just sort of amble from place to place and survive mainly through luck. It's all very boring and uninteresting; I expected something cheesier, and more entertaining, from this genre, but it's almost laid back in it's approach. Watch out for the great Michael Ironside in a cameo role.

But Mimi Rogers is usual awesome. Shame about everything else

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.