Boring

Rating: 4/10 (11 June 2004)

The movie starts quite good with the bad weather effects developing, and we get to see some nice special effects. But as the movie progressed it becomes almost all about the involved characters, and I never really cared about them. Some of the stuff the characters go through is just plain silly. A couple of interesting scenes and some nice visuals spread out here and there were not enough to lift this movie above dull.
*** SPOILERS ***
The basic idea behind the disaster is not so far-fetched that I cannot accept it as a premise for the rest of the film. In a chaotic (as in chaos theory) system, small changes in certain parameters have the power to create infinitely large and unpredictable deviations in a previously stable system. In this movie the change is blamed on some salt water/fresh water ratio. I don't know whether or not this is science, but I accept it. It's a disaster movie, not a scientific documentary.
That said, how the world copes with the changes, that's totally unbelievable. The sky is crowded with weather satellites, there are observation posts all over and what do I know. There's no way these changes would go as unnoticed as in this film. Totally unrealistic development.
Some unrealistic science: The world is not flat, as seen on the scientist predictions on the storm development. The three distinct storm formations, all shown on top of the flat world map, would be much closer and look quite different if the map was properly wrapped around a circular globe.
A lot of the story is supposed to go on where this super storm is raging, and except from the initial storms in the beginning it looks like any odd cold windy winter day here in Norway.
The sea water froze way too fast.
The cold from the outer atmosphere can't come rushing down at you like seen in the movie. Air is actually a quite good temperature insulator. So for cold to come down this quickly, it should be in the form of cold air coming rushing down. Rushing air is also known as wind, but there was no wind in this scene. (Still a cool scene though, no pun intended.)
Why is it so important, except for the symbolism, to start burning books, when there are lots of wooden furniture around?
I can accept the scientific premises, but not very much of what was built on top of it. And that, and the uninteresting characters, ruined this film for me.
Btw: The left-wing propaganda was of course stupid. No need to elaborate, but I will say one thing. If you blow the economy, you can't afford fighting for the environment. A poor country is seldom good for the environment. A strong economy is the basis for fighting for a good environment.