La vallée des tempêtes

A few partial nods to twister with story elements. Very cheap and crappy effects twister scenes might account for 5 mins they seem to have spent more money on the command center tech than they did the CGI. Good looking cast decent story line (family drama). I only gave it a 4 for the drama this is not a twister film. You spend more time looking at people looking at monitors and the sky talking about the coming system.

You may be wondering how I came up with my review summary title "Rub-a-dub-dub two (2) girls in a tub", well if you are curious then you will have to relax and watch the entire film just like I did. Trust me, it will be worth your while and disregard the negative reviews associated with this movie title.

Granted, this is by no means a film classic, nor is it a master disaster film, and the balanced storyline between an imminent disaster (tornado), a lifetime of self blame, and a broken marriage (between Meredith Monroe and Cameron Bancroft) all play a part in this decent drama/thriller.

There was even a very touching scene between the fine performance of actress Rachel Pattee who plays Meredith Monroe's young daughter Becky, and Becky's distraught Aunt Ellie (Played by Pascale Hutton) who is self confined to her farmhouse and left speechless by the family tragedy that occurred 25 years earlier. Becky lovingly is able to reach deep inside her Aunt Ellie's feelings of guilt and fear and draw a simple smile from her Aunt Ellie. It's a touching scene that makes you proud that such a caring neice does exist and we all wish little Becky was our daughter/neice and/or friend.

Regardless of what the other reviewers said, (maybe they get off on wham/bam type of films and their more impressed with overly graphic displays of imitated CGI) I really liked this schmaltzy melodramatic made for TV movie, and the performances by the entire cast were all above par.

I give the film a praiseworthy 7 out of 10 rating. It is well worth watching and look for the two girls in the tub to understand my review summary title.

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.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but not every movie has to have state of the art visual effects for me to enjoy it. So they don't destroy L.A., or the planet, but the characters are well drawn, good acting, and it is an enjoyable film. Want a gory disaster film? Watch something else. Want a nice movie? Watch this.