Supernova

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".

Almost as funny as Robot Monster, or any of the magnificent Ed Wood Classics, but without the deep scientific grasp of those earlier films.

Read a dozen or so reviews -- the reviewers put a lot more into their posts than anyone connected with this incredible turkey -- I didn't see any review mention that our sun can't supernova, it isn't the right kind of star. It can nova, and its furthest expansion will reach the orbit of the inner planets, probably out to earth, but will not fill the whole solar system, as stated by one of the characters.

Great observation by one of the reviewers on how, after surviving in those Phoenix locations, the lucky few come to the surface and get to work on constructing a new sun. Excellent! And naturally in an actual nova there most certainly won't be anyone coming up, and probably no earth remaining to come up from -- but also no sun, and that wasn't comprehensible to anyone involved with this nonsense. No one in the whole project who knew any science at all, with tens of millions of dollars to burn -- pun definitely intended.

During the opening scenes I thought the story would involve the supernova of some distant giant star finally reaching our solar system seven million later. Silly me, that would have been far too stuck in boring reality.

The weirdest part is from start to finish I couldn't stand any of the characters. Can't say that about any of the Ed Wood masterpieces.

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

This movie is full of holes. It's the middle of the day in Sydney at the same time as the Sahara, India and what I presume to be Central America, when they're all meant to be in Australia they keep changing the side of the road that they're driving on, the number plates are not Australian (the cars either), half the street signs don't even exist here, waitresses in cafés don't wear uniforms (except at Starbucks), the only Australian accents are terrible, the desert scenes are definitely more like 14 than 4 hours drive from Sydney - everything about Australia in particular is just wrong! And that's because clearly none of it was shot in Australia. Oh and incidentally - we don't have the death penalty in Australia.

Extend that analysis to pretty much every other aspect of the movie and the only conclusion you can draw is that whoever wrote the script lives on a desert island without so much as an Internet connection. Even the Sun manages to explode on only one lateral plane (that which includes the orbit of Earth), and when the city's burning, the riot police waste their water on looters.

It's really difficult to tell what's going on where (and when) because of all these obvious inconsistencies. It wasn't until Luke Perry says "St Louis is half way around the other side of the world" that I really became convinced that they were meant to be in Australia. Couple all of that with a triumvirate of bad special effects, flat acting and a recycled doomsday premise and you've got a real stinker. A complete waste of time if you ask me.

Still, it wasn't as bad as The Perfect Storm.

Why, oh why, do I keep getting suckered by promotional trailers for DVDs? Anyway, if you have seen the promo trailers for this film, be warned: they are clearly concerning another film never made, brief clips of which showing up in this one for no discernible reason whatsoever.

The principle problem here is a script that thinks it's a remake of "The Day After" but which would fit just about any daytime soap-opera. Since the premise of the film derives from astro-physics, the finale - a typically empty 'happy ending', having absolutely no grounding in any science whatsoever - makes no sense whatsoever.

Although the film actually avoids religion, let's put the matter in religious terms for clarification: Imagine Judgment Day; and God is really pee-ed off and decides no one is worth saving. Suddenly, Peter Pan's Tinkerbell pops up and reminds God that if he really really believes, creation can be saved. God smiles down on a half-dozen soap-opera stars (no, they haven't repented, what's to repent?), and suddenly we're all back in Eden.... - Scientifically speaking, that's "Supernova".

What brilliant con-artist convinced anybody this film could be made? And who are the emotionally troubled people who would like this garbage? By the way, if you're wondering whether one could watch this turkey all the way through, the answer is no; after giving it some 20 minutes, sheer boredom demanded I started skipping scenes sequentially trying to find something interesting to watch. I didn't. But I did watch the whole of the finale to see if there was anything important I'd missed. There wasn't.

And there wouldn't be anything important missed if you skipped the whole film.