Fox Home Video | Review by Dan Taylor
Four
days before the release of this year’s
most-anticipated blockbuster (THE
PHANTOM AUDIENCE as The Gonster’s
been calling it), I got around to watching
ARMAGEDDON, 1998’s big box office winner.
Kids, I’ve seen some
really stupid movies in my life.
In fact, ER’s a mag borne of a love
for and devoted to the very existence of
stupid movies. But, if there’s one
thing I simply can’t stand it's a stupid
movie that purports to be serious yet succeeds
in being incredibly insulting from the second
the flick starts.
We all know the “story”
at work here: an asteroid the size of Texas
is going to hit the Earth in 18 days, so
a group of roughnecks (aka deep oil drillers)
are recruited by the US government to land
on the giant space rock, drill 800-feet
down into its core and place a nuclear explosive
that will blow it into pieces small enough
to pass by the planet. You know what? As
absurd as that plot synopsis is to say,
it’s even more ridiculous to WRITE!
Clocking in at a hefty two-and-a-half
hours, ARMAGEDDON has the distinction of
being the most uninteresting, unexciting
action flick I’ve ever seen. Which
would be bad enough if it wasn’t so
goddamn insulting.
The flicks's most insulting
aspects? Where the hell do I start? There’s
Bruce Willis’ Incredible Disappearing
Accent. Liv Tyler as the beautiful gal raised
by the bevy of roughnecks rounded out by
Will Patton, Steve Buscemi and the black
guy who looks like Ving Rhames but isn’t.
The absurd attempt at sensuality as Ben
Affleck (CHASING
AMY) shoves animal crackers down Liv’s
panties. The pseudo-science that gives the
asteroid its own orbit as well as the fact
that people who aren’t wearing pressurized
suits get sucked from the space shuttle
like it’s AIRPORT ‘75, don’t
explode in the giant vacuum of space and
then drift around until they fly into the
window of the OTHER space shuttle like they’re
The Cow From TWISTER!
Did I forget to mention the
fact that the “astronauts” are
allowed to go out and raise hell the night
before their big mission, the near destruction
of NYC in the film’s opening minutes
(an impressive show of effects work) doesn’t
seem to raise much attention from the world
press and the caricature of the Russian
cosmonaut as a drunk, sweaty dude wearing
a CCCP t-shirt?
It boggles my mind that this
piece of crap made so much money and that
there was talk of how heart-tugging the
finale was! Is there anyone that didn’t
know Bruce Willis’ character would
sacrifice his life so that Liv and Ben could
live happily ever after? Oh, and how come
Liv’s pretty much given an “Access
All Areas” pass to NASA just because
her father’s on the shuttle mission?
And, if the Earth really was in jeopardy
of being destroyed by a giant asteroid,
why did NASA take the time to have patches
made up for the spacesuits?! Wouldn’t
getting somebody up in space be a hell of
a lot more important than a fucking fashion
statement?
It’s too bad it takes
ARMAGEDDON two full hours to get to its
most interesting idea: fearing failure of
the mission, a contingency plan is put in
place to detonate the nukes remotely despite
the fact that the dudes are still on the
asteroid. Had THAT been the movie instead
of a throwaway “oooooh, isn’t
the government BAD!” trick maybe ARMAGEDDON
would’ve been worth watching. Instead,
it vaults to the top of my list of Insulting
Flicks previously led by TOP GUN.
