You Know Ross Perot's Line about a "Giant Sucking Sound"?? :=8P

Rating: 1/10 (5 January 2000)

Well, Hollywood schlock-meister Jerry Bruckheimer has done it again with "Armageddon", another over-blown, overly-idiotic pile of cow flops. This time he would have us believe that only macho roughneck Bruce Willis & his cadre of simple-minded, slovenly oil riggers are all that stand between us and a loud, fx-ladden end of the world. What plot there is involves Willis & his goons REPLACING NASA ASTRONAUTS (who were all "un-cool")to fly space shuttles to land on a meteor that's headed to earth, drill into it, and detonate a nuclear warhead. Oh, and get home in time to save the soppy, needless romance between an obnoxious Ben Affleck("Mall Rats") & a pouty Liv Tyler(aging hair-rocker Steve Tyler's talentless daughter). All of this is crammed together with moore unnecessary explosions, moore shameless flag-waving, and moore cheesy, embarassing Aerosmith tunes than I thought was humanly possibe. This laughable, moronic plot is so wafer-thin it makes Kate Moss look like 350 lbs of buttered lard. :=8P All the characters are vague, non-dimentional cliches spouting incredulous, lousy dialogue: they are about as rich and alive as a rotting mollusk(which might explain the film's vivid scent...). The only actor able to breathe any kind of life into their pitiful roles is Bruce Willis, whose performance ranges from smarmy, self-affecting smugness to over-the-top, unintentionally hilarious. No one else even registers, especially the vaccuous Tyler. Of course, we're all really here for the eye-candy, right?? Who cares about rich characters, engaging dialogue, or a compelling plot, when Hollybore gives us Shiny Thing Go Boom? Well, Bruckheimer gives us Shiny Thing Go Boom ad nauseum. Many things in "Armageddon" blow up for no udder reason that to squeeze in one moore explosion to up the "Ooh-Ahh" quotient. For example, there's one obvious, needless plot device involving a drunk Russian(ooh that's original) & a space platform which blows up just so we can see it blow up. Aside from the overwhelming noise and amount of explosions, the fx were pretty poor - just exactly how does a multi-billion dollar piece of precision engineering, which is grounded when 1 tile falls off in reality, fly through a hail storm of meteor debris? The MooCow has not seen such shameless, jingoistic flag-waving since "Red Dawn", during the Evil Red Empire-Reagan days. The film's message is blatant: America is #1, all other countries should bow down before us & pray that we save their worthless butts. It's hard to believe that such an "ugly American" film would go over well in udder countries. The cheesy, vomit-inducing Aerosmith moosic is a constant irritant, and a lame attempt to curry favor with teens by connecting her with her famous father's hopelessly over-rated band. Overall, this cow hasn't seen such a high-priced, over-blown cow flop since "Independence Day" or "Men in Black", and this film is even worse. The MooCow says don't waste yer time with this stink bomb. :=8P