This doesn't work on so many levels for so many reasons

Rating: 1/10 (2 March 1999)

The most amazing similarity between this film and its sister blockbuster "Deep Impact," is the same level of suckiness they register. This one, the hard-core action flick (as opposed to the spring's sentimental "human" one) dredges up just as many horrible lines and schmaltzy relationship scenes. Only it rushes them and leaves character development on the fly, which is fine in a film like this. But it had better make up for it in action. There's a lot of intense music, testosterone-fueled scream-offs, quick cuts, and a few explosions: all the earmarks of action. But no action. Not on the scale of worldwide destruction anyway.
Like Deep Impact, much of the best destruction was shown in the trailer. A couple of scenes were saved for those willing to put out the price of admission (like the destruction of Paris), but these are few and far between. Here's the perfect opportunity to randomly cut to any point in the world and show its obliteration by any size meteor the creators deem necessary. What a fantastic image. That's what we're here for. It's only used a couple times.
Our hunger for worldwide annihilation is expected to be satiated with excruciatingly long "action" scenes like a shuttle refueling gone awry. These scenes simply feel like budget buffers and unnecessarily stretch the film to an uncalled for 2 and a half hours.
Any astronomers or physicists, hell anyone who passed 6th grade science, should be prepared to feel insulted by the ignorance the script expects you to have. Even if you know absolutely nothing about things like say, gravity, the holes in simple logic are distracting enough to keep you frustrated: Easy access machine guns mounted on the space shuttle's drill machines? (Even though a handgun is under top secret lock and key) There was tons of debris hindering their landing on the meteor; when they take off, because the run time is way too long, it's miraculously gone. At one moment everyone is rushing because there's only 7 minutes of radio contact left. Hours later, once the action sequence has passed, radio contact is fine. With that big of a budget, you'd think they could stick a PA or two on continuity.
Speaking of radio contact, why is it that people in space suits can only hear the other people in space suits with whom they're specifically talking only when they're talking to them? Another annoying transmission snafu: there are only a few moments to drop dead time and Bruce Willis (in outer space) has an unimaginative two minute conversation with his daughter (an earthbound Liv Tyler). I guess the 30 second or so delay between transmission and receipt of each line was inconvenient to the story line. And hey, why was there a camera in his suit, but nobody else's?
Of course the special effects are decent. They better be for that much money. Few of the applications are creative, these generally involved crashing meteors. The effects used on the surface of the big kahuna meteor are unconvincing and bland. Digital effects look so obvious now, they seem to have reached their limit in simply awing us by existing, now they need creativity and unusual application.
Bay does try to infuse some style into the shoot. A few cool angles here and there, and generally nice shot composition. Unfortunately he goes AT&T/British Airways commercial in his montages of all the wholesome cultures around the world uniting in fear and prayer on the eve of Armageddon. At some points the dialogue and character plots are so bad, so pre-fab, one can't help but hope for a sign that this is all tongue-in-cheek. Please, just a pinch of irony. Is this how stupid we've become? Is ID4 really the masterpiece, formula-setting film this movie sets it up to be?
The film starts out with some promise. The impromptu meteor shower on New York with a sprinkling of zany characters gives us the hope for a sarcastic, playful Armageddon. But the waterworks and lovey-dovey crap are heaped on soon thereafter. Armageddon may bring on the end of worldwide destruction movies.