Armageddon Review
by Matthew Dalton (sidney785 AT aol DOT com)February 22nd, 1999
REVIEW 'Armageddon'
Rated PG13, 1998
1.5 stars
Reviewed by Matthew Dalton
Right in the midst of Deep Impact comes Armageddon: a clunker of a movie about an asteroid the size of Texas on a collision course with earth.
The first 10 minutes of this film are pretty entertaining, and, downright spectacular. A comet shower (not detected by NASA) rains on an American spaceship and blows the thing up good before it proceeds to New York City.
Of course, soon after, producer Jerry Bruckheimer digs into stupidity with holes in the script big enough to drive a comet the size of Texas through.
NASA wants to keep the disaster under wraps, and does so. How the hell can you keep the news of NYC in ruins a matter of top-secret information? Easy. Get director Michael Bay to scope out more digital effects than one can count, and you lose all sight of reality.
NASA, soon after the apocalyptic mess, finds out about said asteroid and hires the world's best oil driller (Bruce Willis, in another Bruce Willis role) to plant nuclear bombs on the surface of the asteroid in hopes of splitting the thing in two.
Willis and his wise-ass crew (including Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi, doing his Con Air role all over again) go into space, where, lo, more special effects and over-the-top acting reached heights of me ripping out my eyeballs.
Deep Impact was so real and scary that another comet flick the same year seemed uncanny, like Volcano when it trailed Dante's Peak in 1997 (I prefered Peak over Volcano). Impact had characters worth caring for. Armageddon has zero. The script is so small and lame-brained, that, when in doubt, the characters ask each other "Are we gonna make it?"
Like Con Air, and The Rock, Armageddon is an FX-ridden, unfun, unfunny, flashy film that is a true disaster. Don't forget to check your emergancy exits in the theater before viewing this garbage.
***** a classic **** excellent *** good ** fair * poor
-Matthew Dalton is a critic for the Cinemascope Limited Inc. Weekly-
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
