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Disaster movies: The sublime and the ridiculous
Talk to most critics about disaster movies and you’ll get responses like this:
“They make no sense!” “They’re over the top!” “They’re as cheesy as a Kraft factory!” “The plots have as many holes as Swiss cheese!”
Well, yeah … but that’s why they’re so much fun when they’re done right. What truly separates the good disaster movies from the bad ones are two things: characters that are likable if not particularly deep, and action convincing enough to make us believe there is real danger.
In honor of this week’s release of Poseidon, which I’ll review Friday, here’s a group of disaster movies that exploded — and a few that imploded.
Beautiful Disasters
Deep Impact: The good meteor movie. Certainly there’s nothing classic here, but having Morgan Freeman as your president sure helps.
The Poseidon Adventure: The opening half-hour is TERRIBLE, but once the ship overturns, the suspense heightens, and the overall premise (reaching the bottom by climbing) is ingenious. And God help me, I was actually moved by the bravery of Shelley Winters.
Twister: See Philip Seymour Hoffman before he became Capote and kicked Tom Cruise to the curb! Dopey but fun. Too bad all that wind whisked away director Jan De Bont’s talent. Everything he’s directed since (The Haunting, the Speed and Tomb Raider sequels) blows, so to speak.
Airplane!: OK, so this is a cheat, but this classic spoof Shirley killed the genre for years by offering more LPMs (laughs per minute) than any movie ever made.
Real disasters
Dante’s Peak/Volcano: Can there be such a thing as a good volcano movie? Apparently not. Dante was simply too ludicrous, even for this genre, and I can’t remember much of anything about Volcano.
The Day After Tomorrow: It commits the worst sins of a disaster movie: It’s boring and I didn’t care about anyone. I prefer the morning after.
The Towering Inferno: To be honest, my memories of this are pretty smoggy, but what I remember was more excruciating than exciting. And WHY did this, of all movies, earn Fred Astaire his only Oscar nomination?
Armageddon: The BAD meteor movie. I can sum it up no better than Variety critic Todd McCarthy, who said this was “like watching a machine gun being stuck in the firing position for two and a half hours.� The headache still hurts eight years later.
What disaster movies do you love/loathe? Which have I missed?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Lists
Comments
By Allie D.
May 15, 2006 2:46 PM | Link to this
Perfect description of Armageddon. It was quite simply an armageddon of my sanity watching that over-wrought piece of tripe. Truthfully, I haven’t found a true disaster movie I’ve actually liked. I’m still waiting.By Derwood
May 13, 2006 10:04 PM | Link to this
Not really.. They were pretty bad, I remember seeing all of them in the theater, and while most of them did well at the box office, they really weren’t that good.By Sir Critic
May 12, 2006 1:16 PM | Link to this
To Mister G and Derwood: I must confess I’m a little deficient as far as 70s disaster movies go. I haven’t seen the Airport movies, Earthquake, The Swarm, et al, because, quite honestly, I’ve heard they were terrible. Are there any GOOD ones worth seeing? :)By Derwood
May 12, 2006 5:00 AM | Link to this
You’re also forgetting the Airport movies.. The series where George Kennedy went from maintenance crew to captain of the Concorde in the span of 4 movies.. The Hindenburg wasn’t too bad.. I hated Titanic purely on principle… The only enjoyable part of the whole movie was the party below deck.. I’ve met the band a few times over the years.. And, what about Runaway Train? The screenplay was written by Kurosawa, but not directed by him.. Oh.. Almost forgot The Swarm.. Another of Irwin Allen’s disaster flicks.. The only work of Irwin Allen’s that I’ve enjoyed was the original Lost In Space TV series..By MisterG
May 11, 2006 4:50 PM | Link to this
Always a fun topic. Hmmm, ones you overlooked…how about Earthquake (and the dynamic, buttshaking phenonomenon of “Sensa-round!”), Daylight, with the ever-resourceful Sly, and all those ’50s thrillers like The Day the Earth Caught Fire, The Day the Earth Stood Still (hey, wait, that was a good one, and not really a disaster movie!), It Conquered the World (do invasion movies count?) and the Big Daddy of them all, When Worlds Collide? Do giant critter movies count?