TWISTER
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
(WB) Directed by Jan De Bont Written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Martin Martin Cast Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz MPAA Rating "PG-13" (for "intense depiction of very bad weather") Running Time 117 minutes Reviewed at Wynnsong 10, Durham, NC (10MAY96)
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Auntie Em! Auntie Em! The summer-movie season has officially blown into town with TWISTER, the first must-see movie of the year. Though both underwritten and lacking the momentum of his last film, SPEED, director Jan De Bont's take on Oklahoma storm chasing still impresses with some of the most spectacular special effects ever seen on screen. Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) has blended the authentic with the computer-generated to create a series a storms the likes of which Dorothy and Toto never saw. You'll marvel at the dark, swirling clouds of debris and other matter-- flying cows and tractors and houses, oh my! A tanker-truck that drops out of the sky is a sight, though my favorite is the splintering screen of a doomed drive-in that's showing THE SHINING. The FX also get better as they go. De Bont wisely rations the thrills, saving the best for last. (I could've done without the continuity gaffes, though. Just how *does* a red truck stay shiny after riding through a storm?)
The effects are great, but the script is a *mess*. Blame Michael Crichton, Anne-Marie Martin, and a host of script doctors for, oh, predictable plotting, dumb drama, and characters as corny as Kansas in August. The non-star cast does what they can with the material. Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, playing soon-to-be-divorced scientists, are very sincere shouting lines like "Come on!", "There's no time!", and "Take cover!" (Did the MST3K gang also do a rewrite?) Other cast members include Cary Elwes as a rival storm chaser, Philip Seymour Hoffman as a tie-dyed metalhead who is particularly fond of the meteorological-by- way-of-MTV term "Suck Zone", and Jamie Gertz as Paxton's character's fiancee. (Ms. Gertz plays a "reproductive therapist," if you can believe it. She's there to scream, ask questions, and provide comic relief. That is, until she predictably can't take it anymore.)
There's a lot going on in this movie and, unfortunately, very little of it makes (focused) sense. The central character motivation is a geeky combination of science and thrill-seeking; these guys love to take risks because they love to study storms. De Bont attempts to inject other elements into the film, but they don't work as written. For example, we could do without the tragic fate of Hunt's character's aunt. She exists to reinforce the Very Noble goal of better weather predicting, by showing that tornadoes often cause huge amounts of damage and injury and often without warning. No duh. The sequence is a melodramatic cheap shot and doesn't belong here. Not in a movie that's just out for thrills. In fact, the "back stories" are all pretty bad, but like most storm chasers-- or, if you prefer, most summer-movie audiences-- we're in for the ride. We certainly expect more than a few lulls before we get to see a TWISTER.
Finally, something should be said about the shameless inclusion of pop songs on the soundtrack. They're played too prominently in the background, intruding for no other seeming reason than to sell something else for Time-Warner. The mix of musical genres and styles is often distracting and certainly doesn't blend with the other accompaniment, a windy orchestral score from composer Mark Mancina. (The score is also a bit much, I must say. Must movie music be so overblown? Is James Horner teaching classes in this stuff?) The exception is a short sequence that combines Rainbow, Rossini, and Rogers and Hammerstein; it happens early the film and is one of the few places on the soundtrack that doesn't feel prepackaged.
Grade: B-
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Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC
legeros@nando.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
Visit me in MOVIE HELL
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