Save your money and send a message to Hollywood

Rating: 2/10 (1 January 2005)

This film has all the earmarks of a student production based upon the instructor's mandate to use every special effect and plot twist and stereotyped character ever use in past movies within a 124 minute time frame. Computer simulation, scale modeling, green screening, etc. abound as the personal relationships among characters remained at the TV Soap Opera level. The plot is staid and "politically correct" with no surprises. The good guys always wear white hats (and are noble and selfless) and the bad guys are stupid and wrongheaded. Period. What a marvelously simple world! One special effect after another was stolen from Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Terminator, Escape from NY, the Poseidon Adventure, Planet of the Apes, and countless others. One of the few reasons to see this stinker is to play the game of pointing out just what scenes were stolen from what earlier film. As in Frankenstein, Godzilla and that ilk, the director and writers go to lengths to quickly throw polysyllabic words or concepts at the audience fast enough to give the patina of science, but not to bother to explain the contradictions or illogical assumptions of the film. Hollywood needs to find writers and actors who take their craft seriously and spare us the endless repletion of special effects as if that were all movie making should involve. Save your money.