Tornado Valley

So this was basically a cheap version of Twister. It was made for tv and it's nothing spectacular. But it's not so bad. I thought it was a decent 'lifetime' movie. (Don't think it was actually lifetime, but reminded me of those sorts) A one time watch. Yes, the effects were laughable, but the story wasn't bad.

Slow plot with melodramatic off-on-again-maybe estranged couple get buzz of mutual affection after weathering a tornado. The storms were not convincing, and the story was shallow and took forever to move along. I was pleased with the actors and their performances but they didn't have a story to work. I felt like turning this off several times but was watching with a friend who says it was "better than what we were watching before" which was a bad documentary. I think it was supposed to be a twister suspense story but was instead a long winded tale about a vaguely relevant family's story of recovery of trauma from a tornado 25 years earlier. Good color. Poor story. I would not recommend it. You wait until the last minute to find out what disaster might bring, but I felt let down.

If you took out the storm aspect of this movie, you'd end up with a pretty good American pastoral family movie. The acting is pretty decent, and the storyline interesting. However, this movie appears to be marketed as a weather thriller, which it is not. The climactic scene takes a total of 5 minutes of the movie.

As children "Liz McAdams" (Meredith Monroe) and "Ellie Wilson" (Pascale Hutton) are playing outside when a tornado appears. Racing back to their house Ellie watches as her mother is swept up into the cyclone and suffers from guilt and trauma from then on. Many years later Liz has become a meteorologist who has recently separated from her husband "Matt McAdams" (Cameron Bancroft) partly because of the traumatic experience she also lives with since that day. Anyway, as luck would have it, Matt has been working on a project to help predict bad weather systems and because of this he just happens to be in the same area as Liz when another extremely bad storm system appears with the capability of reproducing the same deadly results. Now rather than reveal any more of this film and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I would just like to say that this made-for-television picture uses the same standard recipe as several other movies of this particular genre. That said if anyone is expecting something different or more exciting than previous films of this type then they will probably end up being a bit disappointed. Additionally, there isn't much action and the graphics could have used some improvement as well. To make up for these weaknesses the plot relies upon inter-personal drama and in that regard it managed to maintain my interest for the most part. Of course, others may or may not agree with my assessment and that is perfectly okay. In any case, while it certainly wasn't a great film by any means, I didn't think it was necessarily that bad either and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

I can't say that this film is actually "awful." It's just not very good. There's not as much action as you might expect and the CGI tornadoes are pretty weak. (Everybody stands around in bright sunlight and a little wind comes up. The next thing you know, a tornado funnel that appears to be about 20' across just drops down into the meadow and pulls somebody away...very slowly. There's no sense of collateral damage, ferocious winds, or even darkened skies. No rain, hail, or flying debris. It's sort of a four-year-old's conception of a tornado.)

This would be bad enough, but the "family story" side of it is also pretty maudlin. I don't know who originally broadcast this, but I'm guessing it was the Hallmark Channel. Absolutely no bite to it.

Definitely not worth your time.