At Best A Bad Joke

Rating: 2/10 (25 March 2007)

Where does one begin with this movie, except to say that it's very bad. Let's begin with some of the more obvious things. First, it's hard to believe that with all of today's available technology an asteroid large enough to destroy the world could be found only 18 days before it hits! But let's assume for a moment that it's true. NASA decides that the only way to stop this from happening is to send people with drilling experience to the asteroid to implant explosives to blow the thing up. Well, maybe, but then we have to take seriously the proposition that the only people in the world who could do this are the rather motley crew assembled. We then have to believe that in less than 18 days (they have to be assembled from all over the world and then they have to fly to the asteroid, which would surely take 2 or 3 days anyway) they can be trained first to deal with space flight and then to actually work on the surface of this asteroid (surely drilling on an asteroid is a little different than drilling on earth?) It kind of makes a mockery of the whole astronaut training program doesn't it? Completely over the top performances from everyone involved make this movie cartoonish. Complete with the requisite love story between Grace and A.J. (Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck) it's really a bad joke, although the last few minutes, which feature Harry's (Bruce Willis) eventual solution to the problem weren't bad. Still, no better than a 2.