Tycus
Rating: 0 on 4 stars
The Info
Directed by: John Putch Written by: Kevin Goetz, Michael Goetz Starring: Dennis Hopper, Peter Onorati, Finola Hughes Produced by: Ashok Amritraj, Elie Samaha, Andrew Stevens
The Basic Plot
When a physicist's discovery of a comet hurtling towards Earth is ignored, he builds an underground city with which to save a portion of humanity.
The Review
Tycus is the fourth film about the end of the planet due to an interstellar collision to be released in the last two years. Armageddon, the most financially successful of the four disaster films, was silly, but with a suspension of reason made for an enjoyable film. Deep Impact was written like a soap opera, but contained enough special effects to make it passable. Last Night, the little-seen effort by Canadian Don McKellar, contained virtually no effects, focusing more on the subtle relationships between family and friends during Earth's last night. While intelligently written, it is perhaps a bit too calm and sensible. There is a very obvious reason as to why Tycus was the only one of the four never to make it to theatres. The Goetzes have written a cliché-ridden, implausible script which when combined with John Putch's boring direction makes Tycus a must-miss, even for fans of outer space/disaster films.
The crisis is very similar to those of the other aforementioned films. A giant object (in this case a comet) is on a collision course with the moon, threatening the safety of every living thing on Earth. The main difference in storyline is that in Armageddon and Deep Impact, the American government knew about it ahead of time, and took steps to counter the threat. In Tycus, a physicist, Dr. Peter Crawford (Hopper), discovers the comet and its lethal trajectory, and alerts the scientific community. Alas, no one agrees with his calculations, and the threat is forgotten. Instead of continuing to try to convince the world that he is right (and he is of course), Crawford goes off and builds himself an underground city that will house a small portion of the human population until the above-ground problems have passed. A former combat photog turned tabloid newsman, Jake Lowe, gets a strange scoop on the city and the comet from a friend on the inside, and goes undercover to investigate. The film's inevitable climax is neither thrilling nor horrific; the film's special effects are so poor that any attempt at excitement is lost on an audience used to state-of-the-art pyrotechnics.
Countless clichés are found in the script for Tycus. There is Jake's troubled marriage to wife Amy; Jake leaves her to start his mission without a kiss goodbye. As he leaves, Amy starts to say "I love you" but is to late. Jake has one particular monologue in which he questions Crawford's decision to choose who gets to survive in his city; it is almost painful to listen to, it is so cliched. There should be a law that forbids phrases like "What gives you the right to choose?" and "You are playing God!" from ever again appearing on film. Everything about the film, from Dennis Hopper's "I've been doing this stuff for decades, I'll get it on the first take" lack of emotion in Crawford, to the cheap, obvious bloodpacks that pop whenever a character gets shot, to the cheap, original-Star Trek-era computer screens that are supposedly "so expensive that even the government doesn't know what we know" make Tycus a failure.
Tim Chandler
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