Twister is so painfully dumb that I'm surprised I made it through the movie without sniffing glue. It stars two b-grade actors, who prove again here they should not be handed the reigns of an expensive movie (Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt). But to be fair the script is lamer than any script has ever been in all of recorded time. What am I saying? Paxton and Hunt are terrible.
She's a tornado researcher who just happens to have a very standard Hollywood backstory: Dad, you see, was eaten by a tornado, and now she has a grudge, umm, scratch that; she has a weird Oedipal, erotic fixation with tornadoes that makes her trance out and walk towards them like a blond zombie. Uhm... sure. Conveniently this background and volition are explained, as I've never seen before, in a flashback. (< withering sarcasm) Moving along...
The tornado team you're supposed to root for is a bunch of unlikeable nerds played by unlikeable people (none moreso than Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who are prone to phony, over-directed cheerful outbursts. Each new scene that featured them, made me wish for a genre switch from "disaster movie" to "R-rated blood bath." I would have had my own outburst (of applause) if they had all been sliced open by heavy machinery in the middle of one of their asinine conversations.
However the worst, dumbest, most excruciating part of this turd is that it presents a rival team of tornado researchers as the villain. (Y'know like high school basketball..?) Bill Paxton actually has to deliver the line (I'm paraphrasing): "Jonas (head of "Team Bad guy") has no instincts, he sought corporate funding and he's in it FOR THE MONEY!" Sure, he's in meteorology for the money, not for the love of low pressure zones. I think at this point a few veins burst in my head.
Jamie Gertz was apparently supposed to function as the woman who might draw Bill Paxton out of Helen Hunt's clutches, but the writers did the usual "Let's make her a drag, so that when she has to go, the audience isn't upset." They actually make this device even more desperate, by having HER deliver the "We're finished" speech. Relievedly... she's OK with it. Gosh that resolved itself nicely. I'm glad I wasn't asked to feel any tension related to human emotions in this movie. Not since Sean Young excused herself out of the plot in "Cousins" has a scene designed to erase conflict so infuriatingly failed to erase conflict.
Do you know what's at least as entertaining as watching tornadoes break things; watching a good script resolve things intelligently or a great script do it cleverly... & being trusted by writers who don't assume you're an idiot.
Making the proceedings that much sadder is the fact that the special effects are actually less thrilling than the low-tech canvas sock they used for a tornado in 1939 for the Wizard of Oz (!).
This movie immediately appeared in a scene-for-scene TV ripoff with Bruce Campbell, called imaginatively "Tornado" that somehow made the whole thing even stupider, with expensive tornado sequences happening off screen during the commercials. That z-grade solution at least made me laugh.
This unredeemable slop should only be shown in the rural sector.
She's a tornado researcher who just happens to have a very standard Hollywood backstory: Dad, you see, was eaten by a tornado, and now she has a grudge, umm, scratch that; she has a weird Oedipal, erotic fixation with tornadoes that makes her trance out and walk towards them like a blond zombie. Uhm... sure. Conveniently this background and volition are explained, as I've never seen before, in a flashback. (< withering sarcasm) Moving along...
The tornado team you're supposed to root for is a bunch of unlikeable nerds played by unlikeable people (none moreso than Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who are prone to phony, over-directed cheerful outbursts. Each new scene that featured them, made me wish for a genre switch from "disaster movie" to "R-rated blood bath." I would have had my own outburst (of applause) if they had all been sliced open by heavy machinery in the middle of one of their asinine conversations.
However the worst, dumbest, most excruciating part of this turd is that it presents a rival team of tornado researchers as the villain. (Y'know like high school basketball..?) Bill Paxton actually has to deliver the line (I'm paraphrasing): "Jonas (head of "Team Bad guy") has no instincts, he sought corporate funding and he's in it FOR THE MONEY!" Sure, he's in meteorology for the money, not for the love of low pressure zones. I think at this point a few veins burst in my head.
Jamie Gertz was apparently supposed to function as the woman who might draw Bill Paxton out of Helen Hunt's clutches, but the writers did the usual "Let's make her a drag, so that when she has to go, the audience isn't upset." They actually make this device even more desperate, by having HER deliver the "We're finished" speech. Relievedly... she's OK with it. Gosh that resolved itself nicely. I'm glad I wasn't asked to feel any tension related to human emotions in this movie. Not since Sean Young excused herself out of the plot in "Cousins" has a scene designed to erase conflict so infuriatingly failed to erase conflict.
Do you know what's at least as entertaining as watching tornadoes break things; watching a good script resolve things intelligently or a great script do it cleverly... & being trusted by writers who don't assume you're an idiot.
Making the proceedings that much sadder is the fact that the special effects are actually less thrilling than the low-tech canvas sock they used for a tornado in 1939 for the Wizard of Oz (!).
This movie immediately appeared in a scene-for-scene TV ripoff with Bruce Campbell, called imaginatively "Tornado" that somehow made the whole thing even stupider, with expensive tornado sequences happening off screen during the commercials. That z-grade solution at least made me laugh.
This unredeemable slop should only be shown in the rural sector.