Great disappointment, horrendous movie.

Rating: 1/10 (8 May 1999)

I truly don't know where to start listing all the things that are wrong with this flick. I left the theater with a terrible headache, and feeling totally insulted. Does Michael Bay consider his target audience to be 12 year-old kids with attention deficit disorder? I find no other explanation for the long succession of flops that comprise this movie.
The story is weak, the acting is plainly horrendous, the shameless flag-waving is embarrassing, and the many plot-holes make the script look like the surface of the Moon.
I especially had a problem with the "suspension-of-disbelief" issue. I understand that when you go see an action film, you need to give some credit to the storyline in order to be able to enjoy it. For example, nobody knows how an alien looks like, or even if there are aliens at all, but we see "ET" and it does not bother us; this is so because the story is superbly told. Everyone knows that not everyone can survive a major explosion, but if the story makes sense and it's well told, we suspend our disbelief, give the creators some credit, and enjoy the show.
In "Armageddon" the (poorly developed) characters are surviving excrutiating life-threatening situations every two or three minutes. They always scape in the very last second, and most of the time totally unharmed. How trite! Once or twice is fine, but not every three minutes through the entire movie. It's cartoonish, and does nothing but to kill the magic that makes us enjoy movies: suspension of disbelief. How many explosions can they outrun? How many shots or ridiculously unbelievable situations can they scape without harm? Pleeeeeease! Of course, this is a Michael Bay product, so any attempt to analyze it in a logical way is pointless.
I certainly did not enjoy the radical conservative undertones through the movie (blatant bashing of Green Peace, only men take action while the women wait at home and catch the action on the TV screen, etc.), and the constant flag-waving to the point of ridiculous. I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but I don't appreciate flag-waving for the wrong reasons, and this movie has plenty of them! Other nationalities are reduced to plain caricatures of overused stereotypes (I felt like gagging every time they showed muslims praying in-masse, African children running in the jungle and pointing at the sky -like in a Microsoft commercial-, or every time the Russian astronaut from the Mir station opened his mouth -there's so many awful stereotypes one can take in a single movie!). Then, to please the close minded crowd this movie was intended to appeal, the only asteroid that hits the earth destroys Paris, of all places!
I'm pretty sure this movie was a great success among trailer-park dwellers, and Rush Limbaugh listeners nation-wide!