Tornado Terror: NYC

10Oct08

Picture a beautiful day in the park. Blue skies, temperate weather, picnics, children playing everywhere. The children see these curious little twists of wind and start chasing them around. Until the little twists all join together into a GIANT MEGA TORNADO that rips the arm right off the Statue of Liberty.

Our manly save-the-day hero is an ex-firefighter who’s now the deputy mayor, and the foxxy doctor scientist lady is his wife, who works for some kind of fancy meteorology outfit. Apparently, the atmosphere above the city of New York has split into two levels, causing electrified tornados to be spawned all over the place. The tornados themselves were really not all that terrifying, as advertised in the movie title, so it’s a good thing they had the whole electrocution angle going for them to make them a bit more deadly and exciting.

Throughout the action, the mayor is alternately being an ass and trying to help (his sudden attempt at the end of the movie to be a good guy does not keep him from being a tornado victim), and there is a newscaster making sure everyone knows the latest scoop. Even though the whole city’s been advised to not use any electricity. Maybe they all have battery-powered TVs. I don’t know. Oh, and foxxy lady’s niece gets trapped underground with a cute boy after the Statue of Liberty’s arm lands on the manhole they ran down into for safety. I wanted her to get killed the whole time, because she had a scrape on her leg and was whining and bitching all the way through the movie. But she didn’t. Damn it.

The destruction of a well-known monumnet scored points here, because that’s one of my favorite things to see in a natural disaster movie. Also, there was one of those “Oh, did you think this was OVER???” scenes at the end. But overall, it was kind of “eh”. The volcano under NYC movie was much more entertaining. And as one of my fellow movie-watchers complained, there was no real explanation for the sudden atmospheric change, though the global warning thing was implied early on. So, I don’t really recommend this one.

Filed under: Disaster Flicks   |  1 Comment