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THE LAWS OF MATHEMATICS
SPIELBERG + CRICHTON = Jurassic Park CRICHTON + LEDER = ER SPIELBERG + CRICHTON = The Lost World: Jurassic Park SPIELBERG + LEDER = The Peacemaker SPIELBERG + LEDER = Deep Impact
It seems to work out pretty well, as long as you leave himbo Clooney off of the big screen. And let's not even get into the syllogism with respect to movie titles:
Mercury Rising -> Deep Rising -> Deep Impact
All you need is something called Mercury Effect and you can toss in Zero Effect and The Trigger Effect, too. It sort of makes you long for uniquely named films, like Schindler's Fist.
Despite the comparisons to similarly titled duds and the sky-high expectations from its blue blood pedigree, pressure from the upcoming Armageddon and $80 million budget, Deep Impact is surprisingly not like a big summer event movie. Though overly sappy and effect heavy, it offers more than just the big gun, big explosion, big one-liner formula that have been stinking up theaters summer after summer.
The premise is simple – an asteroid the size of New York City is headed toward Earth, threatening global destruction and the eventual extinction of all its inhabitants. And no, the world isn't saved by an Apple PowerBook or Slim Whitman records.
No doubt aided by a story culled from recent headlines, Deep Impact is also set apart from the rest of the big budget schlock by tapping into real human emotion. Some of the heartstring tugging is a little too much to handle, but if you're used to the weekly emotion manipulation hour every Thursday night at 10:00 PM, it won't seem quite so painful. I wonder if you can get an emotion callous? I wonder how many times I can use the word `emotion' in this paragraph?
Gung ho MSNBC reporter Jenny Lerner (Leoni, The Naked Truth) accidentally stumbles onto the asteroid story, thinking that she's tracking down a lead about the marital infidelities of the newly resigned Secretary of State, Allen Rittenhouse (James Cromwell, Babe). Jenny doesn't even get suspicious when she watches Rittenhouse sail away on a boat full of Ensure. Once the story breaks, Jenny realizes that she may finally get the big weekend anchor job, which had been previously unobtainable because she's too much of a piece of ass. At least, that's the impression that I got.
The first half of the picture revolves around a crew of astronauts that actually plan to land on the asteroid, fill it full of nukes and blow it apart. They take off on a craft called `The Messiah', which was supposedly built secretly in space, while the government kept the story from the unsuspecting public. The crew, led by aging space-vet Spurgeon Tanner (Duvall, The Apostle), is the last hope for all of humanity. But, if they succeed, the film would only be about 70 minutes.
The second half takes place back on mother Earth, where the government has built a elaborate series of underground caves (also secretly) to hold 1,000,000 people and various plant and animal life for the two years that the planet will be uninhabitable. 200,000 of the lucky humans were `pre-selected' by the government. Hopefully, its rolls include TV's Linda Lavin, bowling great Earl Anthony and all of the MTV veejays.
The most amazing and unbelievable part of the story is the glaring lack of restrictions on the number of bags that one can carry into the caves. Despite the absence of such restraints, there are no guys trying to sneak in jet skis, bowling trophies or comic book collections. Yeah, like that's going to happen in real life.
Instead of just going through the normal boring motions, Deep Impact actually makes you think about what you would do in a similar situation. Do you go to work? Do you `covet' your neighbor's wife? Do you put aluminum foil in the microwave or remove the tag from your mattress? Will Peter Jennings pull down his pants and scream `Bababooey'? Who knows, but while the rest of you have been exercising, reading books and generally improving your lives, I've been stockpiling videos for just such an emergency. See how long you can take 24-hour news coverage of a major event before you're looting the local Blockbuster. Don't come knocking on my door for a copy of Strange Days.
While implausible on both a scientific and a `regular Joe' level, writers Michael Tolkin (The Player) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Jacob's Ladder) stitch together a relatively cohesive story, big on drama and remarkably light on huge effects (until the end). Morgan Freeman stands out from the ensemble cast as the emotionally wrought President Beck. The haunting melodies of James Horner (Titanic) provide even more ammunition to induce tears from teen-aged girls, and you can't really ask much more from a movie than that. Except maybe a good sex scene. Or some karate. Or vomiting. *sigh*
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