TWISTER
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Warner Bros.)
Starring: Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Cary Elwes, Jami Gertz.
Screenplay: Michael Crichton, Anne-Marie Martin.
Director: Jan DeBont.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
The makers of big-budget summer movies and those who attend those
movies appear to have come to an understanding, an understanding best
exemplified by an observation I made while watching TWISTER. Several
times during the film, there would come a point where it would become
clear that the latest sequence showcasing Industrial Light & Magic's
computer-generated tornados was at an end (it usually coincided with the
dialogue once again becoming audible), at which point several members of
the audience would stand up and quickly make their way towards the
restroom. They were probably rather secure in the knowledge that they
would not miss any crucial plot twists or juicy bits of character
development during these brief expository interludes, and even if they
did, they were not missing what they had come to the film to see. Not a
penny of the money they had plunked down would be wasted if they missed a
couple of the characters engaged in conversation.
It is this complicity which produces monotonous displays of
technological prowess like TWISTER, a film with a script that makes
JURASSIC PARK's look positively labyrinthine by comparison. The shell of
a story involves a pair of daredevil meteorologists named Jo (Helen Hunt)
and Bill (Bill Paxton) who are about to finalize their divorce after years
of chasing storms together. Bill is engaged to another woman (Jami
Gertz), and comes to collect the divorce papers just as Jo and her team
are about to set off in pursuit of a rare series of tornados. Naturally,
Bill comes along as they attempt to deploy a device which will provide
valuable data for predicting tornados, just as a corporate-financed (and
hence evil) competitor named Jonas (Cary Elwes) is attempting to do the
same thing. Also naturally, the device can only work if it is picked up
by a tornado crossing its path, which results in the scientists racing to
catch up with twisters so they can leave one of devices.
I suppose you have to give the creators of TWISTER credit for coming
up with a premise which involves people trying their damnedest to get close
to tornados rather than trying their damnedest to get very far away; it
could have been even more tedious. The problem is that it doesn't take
long before TWISTER starts to look like a loop film. There are only so
many ways you can film a bunch of vehicles driving through fields, over
dirt roads, along highways before it becomes a chore to watch, and while
director Jan DeBont uses every swooping trick at his disposal, there is an
awful lot of nothing going on during TWISTER an awful lot of the time.
There may be more driving in TWISTER than there was in DeBont's debut
feature SPEED.
Of course, SPEED had Sandra Bullock playing an actual character to
engage the audience; TWISTER has Helen Hunt playing producer and
co-scripter Michael Crichton's generically flinty female scientist
character. Hunt is probably a better actor than Bullock, and certainly
provides the requisite cuteness factor, but Bullock's heroine was able to
comment on SPEED's improbability throughout the film with her priceless
reactions. The trite love/hate relationship with which Hunt is saddled is
something no one could tunnel out from under, and neither she nor Paxton
has the big screen charisma to make the scenes without inclement weather
anything but a monumental bore. Every single character manages the
astonishing non-Euclidean feat of being less than one-dimensional, with
characterization coming in such subtle forms as the fleet of identical
black mini-vans used by Elwes' corporate scientists (as though you
actually needed to see the three 6's behind his ear) or the Van Halen
tunes blasted by one of Hunt's more annoyingly quirky cohorts (Philip
Seymour Hoffman).
Films like TWISTER are often defended with comparisons to amusement
park rides -- that they make up in thrills what they lack in drama. I
don't think TWISTER even qualifies as a roller-coaster. Yes, the visual
effects are impressive, but it is impossible to watch them with anything
but detachment, because as much as DeBont tries, he can't imbue a natural
phenomenon with a personality (he actually tries harder than he does with
his actors). TWISTER is a surprisingly gloomy and inert experience, with
exactly two flashes of inspiration through its two hour running time.
When they come, they only serve to remind you what the rest of the film is
lacking: any sense of the fun that summer movies are supposed to provide.
Whatever one might think of the increasing mindlessness of effects-driven
blockbusters, you'd think they could at least manage to entertain, or to
give you a reason to come back when you get up to go to the restroom.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 sucking sounds: 3.
--
Scott Renshaw
Stanford University
http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
Have I Seen This Movie: Yes
And What Did I Think?: Twister doesn't have much in terms of plot or story, A group of stormchashers run after tornados to get some sensors into one. Ok.... but it sports some wonderful special effects and sound. That's the case with a lot of summer blockbusters it seems. If you like destructive weather, then you should like this movie. Its great watching this movie on dvd hooked up to a stereo receiver.. the back wall of my room was almost blown out from the intense sound. That's pretty much all this movie is good for though. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt give pretty flat performances, as do their costars. A lot of this movie is too far fetched too.. for instance at the end, they survive right under an F-5 tornado just by being strapped to a pipe in the ground. Sure.... whatever.. they really should have been snapped in half by that force. Heck, Helen Hunt even still had her walkman on afterwards. Plus its amazing that all that running they did by the tornados, that they weren't skewered by flying debris. So, the movie itself pretty much blows... (bad pun), but has the effects and the sound that made me want to try it on DVD.
I give Twister 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Review written July 30, 1999
