TWISTER
(Alternate Review)
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros
Let's Twist Again
(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 General Cinemas at Pleasant Valley, Raleigh, NC (13MAY96)
==
I went back for a second look at TWISTER and I wish I could report better things. The FX are still a gas. Flying tractors, rolling homes, and disintegrating barns; it's all there. Director Jan De Bont, along with Industrial Light and Magic, has effectively realized one of nature's most primal forces and I'm not talking about Jesse Helms. The effects-related thrills are so complete-- so edge-of-your-seat jaw-dropping-- that many may find themselves physically exhausted by the end. In that regard, TWISTER *works*. It excites, therefore it is. On a second viewing, though, the movie becomes more of a bore. The obvious problem-- beyond the missing momentum, overscored music, and shameless product plugs-- is the script. As written, TWISTER rests somewhere between the very bad and the very corny; somewhere between, say, SHOWGIRLS and MR. HOLLAND'S ANUS. (I'd call Richard Dreyfuss's Oscar nomination a special effect, wouldn't you?)
TWISTER opens on an Oklahoma farm, in 1969, where a little girl is about to be scarred by a storm. She'll endure the loss of Somebody Special and then grow up to look *just* like Helen Hunt. Cut to present day, to a pick-up truck traveling on an Oklahoma highway. Former storm-chaser Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) and his fiancee (Jami Gertz) are on their way to meet Jo (Helen Hunt), that now- adult little girl who is Bill's almost ex-wife. (Jo hasn't signed the divorce papers yet, because she's been busy working on Dorothy, get it?, an invention to study tornadoes.) Knowing how it all plays out, I think that we can interpret this scene as the first of many mistakes. Bill Harding isn't the focus of what passes for the plot. He's a strong presence, sure, but he shouldn't be the first person that we lay eyes upon. TWISTER, as we learn, is about that little girl and the storm that she remembers. Jo is the focus of this movie and *Jo* is the one who should be seen accommodating Harding and his fiancee and not vice versa.
The filmmaker's choice of a non-star cast-- a la JURASSIC PARK-- works well with regard to both Hunt and Paxton. They are good actors who exhibit a warm chemistry with each other, even as their dialogue grows increasingly empty-headed. Their light banter soon devolves into incidental exclamations along the lines of "watch out!", "take cover!", and "who wrote this crap?" (They're also very good at out-shouting each other.) No, we never get a sense of who their *characters* are, but they get an ample amount of screen time together and that's enough for most summer movies. Running from vehicle to vehicle and from storm to storm, Hunt and Paxton are also very physical in their roles. They finish the film fleeing the best cornfield dusting since NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
There's really enough story here, between these two characters, that we don't need the other elements. We don't need a team of rival storm chasers, led by Cary Elwes. (Cary Elwes? What's he doing here? If the script called for a "physically unthreatening opponent," then why didn't somebody hire Paul Reiser? He was very good in ALIENS, all those years ago.) We don't need to put a supporting character in peril, to either reinforce Jo's obsession or to put a "human face" on the devastation. (The scene involves a collapsed house and it just stops the movie in its tracks. What a waste of screen time.) And, we *certainly* don't need Jami Gertz, who's character-- a "reproductive therapist," Lord help us-- disrupts the tone about every eight minutes or so. She exists for comic relief (unnecessary) and to ask unscientific questions, so the movie can explain to us, in "plain English," what exactly "weather" is. (Personally, I wish she had asked about the radios and how these guys can simultaneously transmit on so many frequencies at once.)
As dazzling as the effects are, De Bont doesn't back them up with the expert editing that he showed us in SPEED. The storm sequences often last too long and give us too much time to adjust to what we're seeing. (Familiarity breeds lack of fear. A scene inside a car-garage pit plays like a theme-park ride at Universal Studios. Ditch it, but not before explaining why the fools keep looking in the direction of the flying debris.) Another glaring problem is that the film doesn't communicate a sense of either distance or time. We never know how far the characters have been traveling or how long they've been chasing a given storm. When TWISTER *does* come together, the action is usually on a smaller-scale. Paxton and Hunt swerving to avoid falling farm machinery; a tanker-truck that plops onto the highway in a burst of flames; and, the piece de resistance, a drive-in theater that's showing THE SHINING, with a screen that splinters while Jack is having his big ax attack. (Oddly, though, we're never shown any larger-scale devastation. No aerial shots of leveled towns, etc. etc.)
If the scenes were confined to Hunt, Paxton, and the tornadoes, then TWISTER would work just fine. Add their motley crew of assistants (Philip Seymour Hoffman, et al) for both comic relief and local color, and, viola, you've got a movie. The director could do worse than to recut this mess. Ditch the music, ditch the pop songs. Cut as many scenes as possible with Elwes and Gertz. Cut at least half of the incidental dialogue. Ditch the scene with the aunt and the collapsed house. Tighten tighten tighten and we might have something here. (And, since this is a Steven Spielberg production, maybe the idea of director's cut isn't *that* far- fetched. Are you listening Time-Warner marketing?) For now, in its present form, TWISTER is just a lot of wind. The FX are great, but, friends, outside of the funnel clouds, everything else sucks.
--
Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC
legeros@nando.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w)
Visit me in MOVIE HELL
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