Deep Impact (review)

Well we don't do it much, but I try to occasionally post reviews of Geeky movies, and today we have one of Deep Impact by Evan Vetere. A word of warning- he's extremely brutal so if you liked the movie, you'll want to stay away from this review (and I haven't seen it, so I have no comment, although if it's this terrible, I have got to see it).

What follows is a review of Deep Impact by Slashdot Reader Evan Vetere

Deep Impact

There are mediocre movies. There are bad movies. And then there are the movies which aren't just 'miserable'; they provoke a desire for vengeance. Deep Impact, the latest offering from Dreamworks SKG (Speilberg's company), is one of the latter variety.

I don't remember much of the beginning of the film; it's very confused, paced badly, and the camera moves in such a way as to make you nauseous. I do recall the first scene - where a young boy discovers a new star in the sky; an enormous comet larger than the brightest star. He sends a query to an astronomer in Santa Fe on a mountain, who realizes this comet is headed for Earth. The astronomer finishes his pizza, hops in his Jeep and starts speeding down the mountainside recklessly. Halfway he collides wi th a tractor-trailer (also with a reckless driver at the helm) and is sent plunging down the mountainside in a fiery ball.

So basically, we're expected within the first 5 minutes of the movie to suspend logic in two areas: first, to forget about the hundreds of radio telescopes scanning the Belt constantly for asteroids and believe that a teenage boy with a visual scope can d etect this killer rock before anyone else; secondly, believe that because this one astronomer manages to get killed, the world will never find out about the asteroid.

That's way too much to ask of me. I'll stick my disbelief in my coat pocket during a movie if the producers so desire, but not logic. Lost In Space, which I reviewed previously for this estimable mag, had brains. It had satire and irony oozing from the ti cket stubs. This film...

The following line is spoken by a television anchor (the main character) during the movie: "We have lost our visual link with the [starship attempting to divert the asteroid from its course], but we will continue coverage here at MSNBC. [Blank stare at sc reen displaying white noise]" Yeah, right - as if a television station covering the demise of the world would break away to hawk the mouth-watering succulencies of Kraft Cheese Singles.

If I were handed the script for this movie, I or anyone else with a high school education would be able to fix it in three or four hours' time. I sincerely doubt director Mimi Leder will sit at the helm of a theatrical release any time soon. Steven Speilb erg is not someone whose movies I've ever really liked, but this is a new all-time low for him.

The special effects are pathetic, too. Anyone with a nice Macintosh at home and a copy of Adobe Photoshop could have done a better job. And the producers of this movie have bragged about how accurate their physics are... well, there's a point in the movie where the asteroid headed for Earth is broken into two pieces. They quickly spin apart from each other... and stop. Newton's first law of motion anyone?

This is one of the very few movies I regret ever having seen. I'd have been better off staying home on Friday night and watching Chris Carter's Millennium on Fox. At least that TV show is shot well and is moderately entertaining.