In DEEP IMPACT, Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood), joins a field study for his high school’s Astronomy Club and discovers a new comet that unfortunately is headed for Earth. While scientists build a cave to prevent the extinction of the human race, they estimate that only 800,000 people can be selected to survive the “Deep Impact.” The threat of a comet ending the world quickly sends Americans into a panic until the president announces a plan to send astronauts on a mission to destroy the comet before it reaches earth.A great big rock hits the earth, and lots of people die. That’s pretty much all there is to it, and most of that was in the trailer. Can a major Hollywood movie really squeak by with such a slender excuse for a premise? The old disaster-movie king, cheese-meister Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake), would have made a kitsch classic out of this, with Charlton Heston, rather than a resigned and mumbly Robert Duvall, as the veteran astronaut who risks several lives trying to blow up the comet that’s headed right this way! As stiffly directed by Mimi Leder, this thick slice of ham errs on the side of solemnity. It may the be most earnest end-of-the-world picture since Stanley Kramer’s atomic-doom drama On the Beach. There are a couple of classic melodramatic flourishes: an estranged father and daughter who share a tearful reconciliation as a Godzilla-sized tidal wave looms on the horizon; and an astronaut, communicating on video with his loved ones back on Earth, who follows whispered instructions from a buddy lurking just off camera–so that his little boy won’t realize that he’s been struck blind. With Morgan Freeman as the president of the United States. –David Chute
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March 23, 2010
#1
The acting is awful, the story without any thrill… there is so much bad I could say about that movie, probably one of the worst I ever saw. I found it so bad and boring that I quit watching it in the middle after the anti-meteorite mission fails. BTW I wonder if there isn’t (maybe unintended) some anti-African racism in it as an America depicted here with all top-leaders (president, etc.) being African fails to protect the planet whereas other movies of this kind show European national leaders succeed? I would not expect this from Hollywood though, so I guess it is unintended.
Go and get instead a good comedy like Bulworth. At least you will have some fun, thrill, and food for thought.
March 24, 2010
#2
This film is so bad that being forced to watch it could be used as a penalty for warcrimes. It is as scientifically realistic as the Roadrunner cartoons and has all the character development of a Geico commercial.
Out of the hundreds of films that I have watched in my lifetime, of every stripe and quality, this is the first one that was so utterly vapid and feeble-minded that I began fast-forwarding through simply so that I could see the meteor hit and make the big wave. If this film were a sexual encounter, both partners would have fallen asleep during the foreplay.
Life is far too precious to waste on this skanky turtle of a film.
March 24, 2010
#3
Deep Impact is terrible in every way, a cinematic sharp stick to the eye. I can forgive the lame special effects but the overall mawkish tone made me want to vomit. Truly awful.
March 24, 2010
#4
We have here a movie that epitomizes everything that is wrong with Hollywood movies: sickening sentimentality, gung-ho patriotic drivel, the completely telegraphed happy ending, and such a persistent effort to be as PC as possible that it paradoxically becomes stereotypical. Did I mention the bad acting and dialogue and the stupid plot? What is with these ‘saving the world at the last possible second’ movies? Please, can we rub out the disaster movie forever? If I see another bad actor outrunning a fireball, tidal wave, or tornado I’m going to smash my TV set.
March 24, 2010
#5
Whenever a movie takes itself seriously, and acts as though it is going to deal seriously with a scientific subject, then I expect them to have the basic science down. This movie was profoundly dissappointing. I would give them a F minus for the extreme blunders in the science.
The movie begins with a high school boy with unaided eye in Virgina Beach, VA noticing a strange star that is actually the comet and asking his teacher about it. What????? Where are the world’s professionals? There are thousands of people world wide who search the skies with good telescopes for comets, hoping to find one so they can get it named after them. And a boy at sea-level, looking up through the entire atmosphere, in a light polluted area, is the first to see it?
The astronomer freaks out when his computer shows a projected impact with earth, his ISp is down, so he and races in his vehicle down the mountain so fast that he has an accident? What’s the big rush? It won’t hit for over a year and a half. He can simply telephone, or wait a bit for the ISP to come back up.
The USA gov’t keeps it secret for over a year??? No leaks?? No one else in the world ever looks up???
A manned spacecraft with only a few nukes to destroy the comet? Cheaper and better chance of success to send several smaller automated ships with lots of nukes.
There is a scene where an astronaut is on the comet’s head and is jumping up and down on a stuck probe to free it. But he should be in microgravity and will only weight as much as a feather.
And the stupidity continued in scene after scene.
Armeggedon was stupid too, but it didn’t pretend to take itself seriously. I viewed it as a kind of comedy so I don’t come down so hard on it.