Irwin Allen Revisited

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2004)

Irwin Allen was the king of disaster movies. But they always lacked. `Poseidon Adventure', `Earthquake', and `Towering Inferno' have similar story arcs, with most of the excitement happening in the first half. The rest of the film trudges along as all the characters have to go through their hang-ups as they try to survive. Roland Emmerich does a good job at duplicating this story arc, but that does not mean it could be better. This film should NOT be compared to ID4, because that was an enemy that was to be vanquished in the end. Here, the enemy is nature. There's really no way to kill it or stop it from doing what it wants to do. The scope of this film tries to be global, but it shows the budget limitations by keeping images of other locations very tight. When Tokyo gets pummeled with hail, we see only a couple of store fronts on a street. Scotland is represented by a couple lab rooms that could be anywhere. England's demise is nowhere to be seen on screen, other than a few CGI helicopters encountering the weather.
My main appeal for this film goes back to the movie `Twister'. That movie, despite a horrible script, still provided great thrills and was a big hit. This is the first major movie since then to feature tornado effects. With the advances in CGI, I always thought another tornado film (and not a sequel to `Twister') could be truly scary. The scenes in this film of tornados in LA are by far the best. It's also pretty quick. Nevertheless, the images are photo-real. Emmerich does not try to scare us too hard throughout the film. I felt a chill once in a while, because Nature is a force that can't be stopped. The scenes of imminent doom do give you a thrill. A complaint that I would echo is that New York has been destroyed a few too many times on film. Emmerich has personally demolished that city twice already before this film. Why not Chicago? How about Seattle? It would be nice to see something new. Massive tidal waves sinking New York? `Deep Impact' already did it. Then comes the second half of the movie in which New York is buried in snow. Well, snow isn't that exciting. We see no less than three shots of the Statue of Liberty snowbound. Maybe a cool shot the first time. The second and third time it's already `been there, done that'. The last half of the film basically is stuck in the New York library. The building becomes the `Poseidon' in that respect.

I will not go much into all the actors and their characters. They all do a competent job, and decent humour is tossed in appropriately. You never become too attached to any of the characters, and your eyes will roll a few times for lines like the cynical boss telling the lone scientist `You have 48 hours'. There is no point in finding any logic as to why Dennis Quaid struggles to walk from Washington to New York to rejoin with his son.
(Minor Spoiler) The third act of the film has a loose narrative thread, and it seems that preposterous looking CGI wolves were thrown in as a surprise' element to liven the 3rd act. It fails. Indeed, even with the swelling music and such, it takes the ending credits to cue the audience that the film is over.
All in all, I would recommend this film. I think it could've used a rewrite. But the all the elements add up enough to make worth the trip.
I give it a 6 out of 10.