| REVIEW: STORM CELL |
[Jun. 15th, 2008|03:13 am] |
NOTE: Since the Sci-Fi Channel denied me NYC: TORNADO TERROR last night for socially conscience reasons I figured I might as well dig out this review I've been sitting on of another new made-for-cable tornado flick that premiered on of all channels the Lifetime Network a few weeks back.
I've always been fascinated by tornados and because of that I can't help but tune in whenever a new tornado movie comes along. The problem with most tornado movies is that with the exception of TWISTER they're always cheap made-for-TV/DVD productions that don't have the budget to bring to life the kind of awe-inspiring tornadic destruction viewers really want to see and they're almost always similarly formulaic, usually saddled down with some bland family melodrama. Even TWISTER boiled down to a squabbling ex-husband and wife team rekindling their love for one another amid an outbreak of tornados. And as is typically the case, the main character is usually a tornado chaser or a meteorologist with a thing for nature's vortexes whose obsession with this facet of nature stems from some deep-rooted psychological scarring from having lost loved ones to a tornado in their youth. STORM CELL is no exception.
Well, there is one exception. Only the Lifetime Network could produce a tornado movie that finds a way to work in a major subplot about a teenage girl nearly getting raped by an abusive boyfriend. More on that in a moment.
This piece of tornadosploitation opens up with a flashback detailing how our main character witnessed the death of her parents via tornado. April Saunders was just an ordinary Oklahoma teenager when she and her baby brother watched their father and mother stop to help an injured truck driver in an open field only to have a tornado come along and smite them. But mom and dad didn't just get killed by a tornado - the twister launched a pick-up truck at them. God clearly wanted these people dead with a vengeance.
Now an adult played by Mimi Rogers, April's grown up to become a tornado chaser, college professor, and published author of a book about the threat of global warming that's been labeled as fringe science for reasons never fully detailed. Might have something to do with her constantly blasting the government for trivializing global warming and her demeanor about climate change being even more doom and gloom than Al Gore on his worst day. Her tornado obsession has led to her being nicknamed "tornado lady", a nickname she hates. I'm not sure why since "tornado lady" really doesn't sound all that derogatory. Now if they called her "funnel butt" I could understand her being upset.
Mimi Rogers gives a three-pronged performance: gazing at either her laptop readings or the clouds in the sky and looking deeply concerned by what she's seeing, bickering with others about weather or family related issues, and getting overly emotional about whatever.
April has a daughter, Dana, a high school senior with a passion for acting and an even greater passion for bitching about her workaholic mom not spending enough time with her at the most inopportune moments. She'll be at her high school rehearsing some Shakespeare when word comes that a tornado warning has been issued; everyone huddles in the basement just in time for the twister to level most of the school. Mom, who went from chasing the storm to making a desperate mad dash to get to her daughter before the tornado struck - she even called in the tornado warning too - will finally arrive at the remains of the school and be greeted by Dana yelling a series of "Where were you?", "What took so long?", and "You're never there when I need you!" Later on, after rushing into mom's arms after being terrified by a severe hail storm that also involved a tornado obliterating most of a small town, when mom tells her she has to go help the authorities deal with the tornado outbreak, Dana once again begins bitching because she'd promised to take her to look at a nearby college that day. I do believe a slap would have been order by this point.
Hey, if there's no estranged husband/wife subplot the lead character has to have someone who's annoyed with them so that they can spend most of the film arguing before finally making up at the end, and if that someone is a surly teenager then so be it. There's not much deviation from this formula when it comes to tornado flicks.
They'll leave Oklahoma behind for Seattle, Washington to pay a visit to April's kid brother, Shawn, and his very pregnant wife. Sort of like JAWS: THE REVENGE, the tornados have followed her to a new location far away. Unusual weather patterns have begun to form around the Seattle, Washington area and, apparently, because tornados are not native to the Pacific Northwest nobody living in the state of Washington - not even the actual meteorologists - know diddly squat about tornados or how to predict dangerous weather patterns and need a certain "tornado lady" from Oklahoma to do all their work for them. They probably really need her too because people in Washington State seem to have a weird habit of reacting to monster tornados bearing down on them by standing motionless, gawking at it for way too long before deciding maybe they should run for their lives.
The first sign of trouble in Seattle comes moments after they arrive; April walks into a room during a weather forecast reporting unusually severe weather coming and ominously decrees, "This is just the beginning". Oh, and the weather man on TV just happens to be her old college sweetheart too. No sooner does she start calculating the probability of a tornadic outbreak on her laptop, down comes the first tornado quite literally materializing behind some guy's back when he wasn't looking. Now brother and daughter all think April actually made this trip with ulterior work-related motives in mind. Cue more bitching.
Now you'll notice I haven't said anything about the film's science and that's because I've come to learn with movies like this you might as well send that flying out the window. However, one thing I do have to take issue with. They used real-life storm footage during a newcast to simulate the havoc being wrought by the tornados. One problem: MOST OF THE STOCK FOOTAGE WAS HURRICANE FOOTAGE, NOT TORNADOS!
Shawn, a policeman who seems to be the first person that gets called whenever one of these tornados touches down regardless of how far away it was, gets to argue with his sister about her tornado obsession leading to the mandatory for tornado cinema "you can't blame yourself because there was nothing you could do to save them" speech.
Also, for no particular reason other than it appeared the screenwriter was determined to cram in one more extra subplot that he couldn’t find time to develop, the great Michael Ironside gets criminally wasted in three very brief scenes as a rich real estate developer who'll get to watch on as a tornado obliterates the subdivision of houses he was building. I suppose this was his comeuppance for daring to mouth off to Shawn earlier about how much red tape has been holding back his progress.
April joins forces with her former flame to deal with the Washington state tornado menace, which includes foolishly flying dangerously close to a monolithic tornado in a dinky helicopter. Upon landing, an extra layer of unnecessary melodrama will be added to the mix when she stuns him with the news that Dana is actually his daughter. Let me remind you again that STORM CELL is a Lifetime Network original movie.
Dana will take time out of her busy bitching at mom for being a workaholic who's never there for her schedule to hook-up with a dreamy delinquent named Ryan. In a rare change of pace, it'll turn out that the dreamy delinquent isn't really a misunderstood rebel but actually a sociopath in the making. Tornados are reeking havoc all around them and this hooligan is taking Dana back to his rich daddy's mansion where he'll hold her captive, knock her unconscious, and attempt to rape her. Only the Lifetime Network, folks…
This ineptly staged last second subplot will climax with a hysterical moment in which Ryan holds Dana at gunpoint in the backyard as April, Shawn, and the man who just learned he had a grown daughter confront the punk while a massive tornado rapidly approaches from behind. Ryan will finally turn around and do a double take upon seeing that, yes, there is indeed an enormous twister about a 200-yards away, which I guess we're supposed to believe he did not hear approaching. And because this is a Lifetime Network original movie, the punk doesn't even get killed by the tornado. Boo!
The whole Seattle tornado apocalypse threat the film spent most of its run time building up is forgotten about in favor of the boneheaded date rapist/stalker angle of the final third; the tornado is merely there to impede her rescue and add one last second layer of extra danger. It ends up taking such precedence that not only do we never learn what happened elsewhere with the tornados or if there’s a threat of more to come, Mimi Rogers never even got a chance to lecture us about how it’s all global warming’s fault.
A mildly diverting lukewarm entry in the tornadosploitation genre, STORM CELL only deviates from the routine formula of the subgenre by rather inexplicably transforming from a typical tornadic disaster movie into a bonafide Lifetime Network teen-in-peril flick for the finish. Using the Fujita scale to rate tornado movies, I'd have to rate STORM CELL a weak F2. |
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