How he does it?

Rating: 3/10 (27 November 2004)

GOOD POINTS: The reference to the current political dynamic duo on top of the Government was briefly enjoyable, and the Mexico issue was a direct hard throw to the nature of treatment and relationship between U.S. and Latin America.
THE REST: How is that this director gets money to keep doing movies? Isn't clear enough he is doing some of the worst movies from the end of the 20th century and early, newly born 21st? or it's probably the 4 years without directing one that erased our memory? or it's just that studios are confident enough that we are stupid enough to keep wasting our money going to see such a bone? I was refusing to rent this movie but at the end I said what the heck, let's give a chance.... and Oh Lord, do I regret! Mr. Emmerich & company seem to insist in convince us of something that can happen, seriously, based on "scientific" basis, and they actually fool quite a lot of people doing it so: there is NO scientific true behind his plot, despite everybody's straight faces all the time. What he pictures here CAN NOT happen in a matter of one month or less, EVER, not even when the Sun start dying. If the core of the plot is cheezy but the facts after that were believable I'd give him a break, but please: the heroic girl going back to rescue a stranded passport? a huge oil vessel cruising on 5th av. & 42 st, a couple of minutes after Manhattan has been flooded (some few feet of water by the way)? The heroic guy attached to the telephone despite there's no more to say waiting to be top off by freezing water? A family of awesomely bad rendered wolves surviving some hundred feet of water, on the loose and on the prowl to attack precisely into the oil vessel? A three man hike expedition from Philadelphia to New York under Himalaya conditions, with purpose of...? what? partial family reunion? and completed in what, 1 night?? When the noise of a huge cruising oil vessel was rumbling over the city, I thought Godzilla was making his entrance all over again! It was like watching that again! I felt a strong lack of basis and credibility, the bottom line of the story it's awfully handled to get the disaster and absurd facts that they want to show no matter how, when or why. If you are going to make a film based on a fantastic story, science fiction or a fable ("I, Robot", "A.I.", "Star Wars", etc, etc.) you can go and do whatever you feel like doing, but manipulate scientific reality to make us believe this can happen and then picture absurd situations on top of that, is not part of what I consider art or even entertainment. The music is too cheezy, almost sounds like the same piece of "tutti virtuoso" with all the orchestra instruments playing loud at the same time EVERY TIME a supposed-exciting scene breaks in. Special effects? The same as in Godzilla 6 years ago, way overcome by a lot of recent magnificent achievements (the Spidermans, the Matrixes, etc.) At least at the end is plausible we didn't see Godzilla stepping over anything in Manhattan or Mel Gibson carrying the U.S. flag all over the place or the U.S. President giving the definite knock out to annihilate a awesomely huge fleet of millions of evil extraterrestrial aliens. I hope I can stand and not watch Mr. Emmerich movies ever again, specially the one coming "One Nation"... we can imagine where it is going to go.
3 out of 10 for one funny political reference and the social content of the U.S.-Latin America reverse of fortune.