Held Back By The Weight Of Its Own Excesses

Rating: 6/10 (30 April 2001)

The problem with blockbuster films like `Armageddon' is that they want to do everything. They want heartbreaking romance, pulse-pounding action, gripping drama, slapstick comedy . . . all in the same film. Trouble is, few films ever succeed in accomplishing this tricky blend of different genres. `Armageddon' isn't one of them.
In a nutshell, `Armageddon' starts out as a disaster epic, with a Texas-sized meteor hurtling towards Earth. This meteor will obliterate all life on Earth unless a group of oil drillers can somehow fly to the meteor, drill a big hole into the side of the meteor, and blow up the meteor with a sizeable amount of nuclear explosives. Mixed into this disaster epic is a full-blown romance, comedy, serious, thought-provoking moments, and a smattering of other scenes designed to give `Armageddon' the feel of a true Hollywood epic. What comes out instead is a true, bloated Hollywood mess.
`Armageddon', which at least looks cool and has the superficial sheen of a Hollywood blockbuster, is weighted down by a barely there script and awkward shifts of tone. It's hard to take a character's impassioned speech about saving the Earth seriously when he's only been cracking jokes about the matter only moments before. Shifts in mood like this look effortless and natural when they're done right; the shifts between comedy/drama/romance/et cetera in `Armageddon' are labored and forced.
The story suffers from major plot holes as well. Forget the logistical impossibilities of `Armageddon'; even simple stuff gets made unbelievably preposterous. For example, the meteor is the size of Texas . . . but the drillers only have to drill down four hundred feet into the meteor's surface? Hey, why bother drilling at all, if that's the case? There's a tedious section of the film involving the Mir space station that does nothing but waste film, there's enough crashes and accidents to fill twelve action films, let alone one - `Armageddon' reeks of excess, and suffers because of it.
As Harry Stamper, Bruce Willis saves this film from being unwatchable crap. Even if the story's ludicrous, he makes Harry Stamper a quiet, reluctant, slightly believable hero, and more importantly, he makes Stamper somebody an audience can root for. Willis is good enough to single-handedly pull `Armageddon' out of the trash and make it at least entertaining. Also good is Michael Duncan Clarke as `Bear' - he comes across as a person, rather than just as a cartoon character, and as such he's someone to root for as well. Ben Affleck is completely bland and forgettable as A.J. Frost, as is Liv Tyler as Harry Stamper's daughter Grace- considering they're the two romantically linked characters, it makes for a fairly uninteresting romance. If the Harry Stamper character didn't care so much about Grace and A.J., both of those characters would've been a complete waste of screen time.
Still, `Armageddon' deserves credit for trying to hit a home run, even if it only wound up with a cheap single. The movie's still kind of fun, in a mindless, dumb sort of way. If you're in the mood for a decent, cheesy popcorn flick, rent it, and watch it on a big screen TV with a killer sound system. But only watch it once, unless you want the plot holes to drive you utterly mad.
Grade: B-/C+