Cyclone, catégorie 6 : Le Choc des tempêtes

I'm a bit of a disaster movie junkie. I just can't miss a film, no matter how bad it looks to be, as long as it promises some kind of cinematic carnage. I've sat through 'Night of the Twisters,' survived 'Atomic Twister,' and laughed all the way through '10.5' But 'Category 6: Day of Destruction' hits new lows. The computer graphics were so poor as to be embarrassing even for what you'd expect from a 'made for television' piece of crap. But it was the onslaught of every cliché in the book that really got to me, from the adulterous husband, the weather man who feels guilt over a past failure, the evil corporate guy, and to top it all off they gives us the pregnant lady in an elevator schtick…I'm mean PLEASE!

With all that said I'me already set to record part two. It's possible that I need help, or maybe an intervention.

Average film. Very routine formula film about a disaster.

There a few things going for it, and a few things against it.

Against it are the settings. Too many city shots, with buildings, motor vehicles, people in suits and ties, all that which makes for dull spectacle. There are some very trite situations, the young lady not taken seriously by a trite bespectacled wimp, the fascination with computers, the power plays that bore most people, the predictable outcome of the storm chasing moron.

For it, while the characters at first begin to sink into stereotypes, each one is brought out with at least one saving grace. Not sure if this saves the film, but it does show some semblance of style and intent to keep it from being too silly. We aren't left with too many predictable and trite results, and it still has entertainment value.

Who directed this piece of crap and coerced such horrid performances from veteran actors? Is it just me or is Randy Quaid playing the same character he played in 'Independence Day'? The Dialogue is so laughable that I would rather the characters just didn't speak unless absolutely necessary because they have nothing worthwhile to say.

This movie surpasses 'The Day After Tomorrow' in the categories of "Tree Hugging" and "How Much Of My Political Agenda Can I Push On Other People?"

The plot is very weak. After two hours I am not concerned about the weather. Why is there anything with the power company in this movie. As if having power on when or even the couple of hours before the storm would have helped. You could not evacuate that many people in a few hours and if the storm was really that big the city would have lost power anyway. That whole part of the story line could and should have been omitted.

And what power company has no IT department but a single man that they contract work out to? PUH - LEASE!!!!!!!

Sort of like a train wreck, I had to watch this and part seven. Very goofy, but had some interesting yet predictable plot lines.

The whole message of this series (at least the two parts I watched) seemed to be that we humans are bad, bad creatures. According to what I gleaned from these two parts: We and we alone caused global warming, should recycle more, should stop driving and should stop using so much energy. And of course, all energy companies are evil.

A very preachy series! Oy!

Some of the plots were predicable. Like Chandra West and Thomas Gibson in their obvious extra-marital affair, crisis with family, resolve issues during weather disaster.

Randy Quaid was a hoot as he more or less did a reprise of his "Independence Day" role as a whacked-out misfit.

A lot of the special effects were repeated in both 6 & 7 (like a skyline view of Chicago then a skyline of Washington, D.C., with the same carnage in the foreground - or a repeat shot of a power plant, one in Chicago, one in D.C.).

I had to suspend disbelief as the time-line of many of these events and scenes defied logic.

Overall – poorly written storyline with average acting and quirky special effects.

Okay, so I enjoy a romp through destruction now and then - I'll admit it, I'm a disaster movie fan. That is, when the movie is ABOUT a disaster, NOT when the movie itself IS a disaster - BIG DIFFERENCE! My husband and I almost turned this off after the first hour of the first night, but decided to stick it out to see some potentially cool special effects. Okay, we got those. And then we felt compelled to watch the conclusion on Wednesday. Sloooooooooow. Boooooooooring. Not to mention stupid! I was pretty willing to overlook the paper-thin characters, lame dialogue, and clichéd, disjointed plotting. I was even mildly willing to overlook the damage done to the anti-global-warming cause. But in a movie where obviously somebody had enough computer smarts to give a realistic facsimile of the St. Louis Arch twisting and shouting, why wasn't there an equally savvy computer geek on hand to EDIT OUT THE PALM TREES from the stock footage dubbed in as "hurricane hits Chicago?" HELLO ALL YOU ON THE WEST COAST - last time I checked, Chicago was still located in the Midwest (you know, that "fly-over" country that produces most of YOUR food???), and guess what? There are no palm trees in the Midwest. SURPRISE!