Less than Mediocre

Rating: 4/10 (15 March 2005)

This film simply is not good. It is far from the worst film I have ever seen, but it is simply mindless entertainment, a fact which even most of those praising it admit. This alone does not make a bad film, as not every film has to be deep or insightful, but this movie is extremely mindless and in order to succeed as entertainment it must be pulled off really well. This film is not.
The basic plot is, needless to say, not original. Again, while originality alone is not necessary for a good film, it is just one of many things wrong with it. The lack of originality is hit home by the fact that Deep Impact, exploring the same issue, came out about the same time (and, I think, is a much better film).
The film is, moreover, thoroughly predictable. The story, the characters, and the ending are all predictable. The only exceptions are actually worse than predictability because they involve events or apparent jokes that are either tasteless and inane, or surprising simply because they seem completely out of place and inappropriate (see below).
The acting, events, and development of the plot range from mediocre to simply inane, with stupid people in places they shouldn't be, and people doing utterly moronic things at utterly inappropriate times. Apparently, some of these elements seem to have been designed for humour, but they come across as just stupid and out of place. Other bits of humour are simply crude and tasteless.
In short, this film lacked in pretty much every aspect: intelligence, originality, predictability, development, etc. Thus, even for pure entertainment "disaster" films, it simply does not shine at all and is a mediocre production even among mindless films. The result is quite boring and not worth the time. It did not fail uniformly terribly in all aspects, though, and there are many much worse films out there.