alansmithee04 Reviews

The 13th Unit (2014)

Mind-Bogglingly Awful

[1/10 · 22 March 2014]

It's hard to overstate how gut-wrenchingly incompetent this film is. It looks like the final project of a student at an unaccredited film school. Specifically, a student who sat dozing in the back of the classroom while zonked out on cough syrup.

The film is about a demon haunted storage facility. The story lines of three groups of characters exploring the place are not so much intertwined as put in a bucket and mashed together with a toilet plunger, creating a confusing mess whose only positive outcome is to obscure the film's insipid plot. As the victims are picked off by the POV monster (fortunately never seen) we're treated to endless repeats of the last scene of "Rec", which might make for an interesting drinking game, but only if Thorazine were used instead of alcohol.

The main group of characters appear to be three hapless college age kids (Stringy Hair, Mr. Eyebrows and The Girl) who go on a treasure hunt in the aforementioned storage building. Their story is inter-cut with the two other groups, a widower and his dude-bro friend and a pair of women who (bewilderingly) resemble a young Melissa Etheridge and Cher. All three groups wander through poorly titled scenes edited by an old copy of Windows Movie Maker until the POV monster shows up to end their misery.

All-in-all, this is the kind of movie I would have made if I'd been a 16 year old death-metal fan with a serious head wound. Maybe the guys at Rifftrax could do something with it, but I doubt that even they could make this train wreck entertaining.

The Happy House (2013)

Annoying

[2/10 · 5 October 2013]

Since they advertised this film as a "horror comedy" it might have been nice if the film makers had indeed included some horror and some comedy. Unfortunately all we get here is a few half-drawn characters and a sparse handful of horror movie clichés.

Long story short - an annoying New York couple stay at a B&B run by an annoying old woman and her dull son. There they play with their cell phones and tablets, meet a boring Swedish butterfly collector and then play with their electronic toys some more.

Once the "horror" starts, it's really hard to care about the fate of these dullards. But don't worry, they don't seem to care much either. And by the time this excursion into ennui sputters to a halt with all the impact of a wet firecracker, neither do we.

The Lost Episode (2012)

Just...don't.

[1/10 · 10 November 2012]

Not a found footage movie, but rather a movie based upon what's become one of the more standard found footage movie plots. What am I talking about? Only this...

Pennhurst is about a group of obnoxious teens who go to an abandoned mental hospital to screw around. While there, the most obnoxious of the bunch tells the story of a TV "ghost hunting" crew who visited that selfsame hospital and were brutally murdered. Pretty standard, yes? No! This film doesn't even try to maintain the found footage conceit. Badly chosen music, meant to be scary I suppose, crops up on the soundtrack throughout. And speaking of scary, there ain't none. Maybe two or three scenes, all of them staring the film's director/star Michael Rooker, could be considered at all scary and then only if they were taken out of context with rest of the film.

If Pennhurst has a saving grace, it's that at least the cast looked like they were having fun shooting it. Which is good, because I doubt anyone else will enjoy it as much.

Episode 50 (2011)

OMG what is this I don't even...

[1/10 · 2 October 2011]

And scraping the bottom of the Blair Witch / Paranormal Activity barrel I find this film, grinning idiotically up at me, just waiting to consume 90 minutes of my life.

You know, I admit it, I'm a sucker for these kind of horror films. So I probably deserve it when some celluloid creature like this shambles out of the dark and takes a bite out of me. But, seriously, when someone has an idea for a movie - shouldn't they, you know, kind of flesh it out? Think it through a few times? Am I being too demanding here? "Episode 50" follows two teams of "psychic investigators", one secular and one religious, into one of those "most haunted place on Earth" places (of which there are several hundred or so if you watch these kind of TV shows), in this case an old mental hospital. There's lots of back story concerning the team members, which is constantly being introduced until practically the very last frame of the film. There's lots happening, with each team presenting conflicting reasons for the ghostly goings on.

And there's practically no coherent overall idea of the film.

The flimmakers here want to use the "found footage" format AND have their scary background music too. They want to scare us WITHOUT building up tension. They want to slip in a cute little religious message AND have it taken seriously. Heck, the probably want to lose weight by eating ice cream and get rich buying real estate with no money down.

Mix the half-baked, nearly incoherent film style with some egregiously bad acting and out pops a film that makes "Return to Pontianak" look like "Silence of the Lambs." Seriously, the most horrible thing about this film is that I spent time watching it. Don't make that mistake. Save yourselves!

The Fantastic Four (1994)

Fantastically Moronic

[1/10 · 30 July 2011]

Look, I really don't have anything against comic book movies. But, WTF??? Even as a cheap copyrights-holder, this film makes no gawddam sense what-so-ever. There is simply no good excuse for this film existing. Watching it is like being lightly slapped in the face for 80 minutes with a pair of Invisible Girl's gloves - it stops being funny after a couple of minutes.

Things happen for abso-tootly-ootly no reason in this film. Scenes change with no regard for coherency or continuity. Hardly any characters are introduced, they slink in and out of scenes as if they don't really want to be caught on film, then half of them disappear without the slightest explanation.

Yes, I know it's Roger Corman. Yes, I know they spent $18.50 on the entire film. Yes, I know they shot it in 10 days. But there's another thing I know. I also know that only mentally impaired basement-dwelling comic book fanboys would find this cinematic abortion even marginally entertaining. You would be better off watching mold grow on a grapefruit than watching this pathetic excuse for a movie.

The Shrine (2010)

Better than average horror pic

[6/10 · 4 June 2011]

Yes, the script is kinda cheesy. Yes, the actors are blandly pretty. Yes, the characters do annoyingly dumb things in the woods. But there are some pretty decent aspects to "The Shrine" that make it worth the 90-odd minutes out of your life time to watch it.

First of all, it's not as entirely stupid as 99.9999% of horror movies currently in release. Early on there are some sequences which are, though derivative of J-horror, at least nicely scary. There's a very well done mid-movie change up and an ending that actually doesn't make you want to throw up your hands in disgust.

Faint praise, I know. But compared to the brain dead gore porn masquerading as horror films these days, this film's attempt to generate some real scares seems almost revolutionary by comparison. "The Shrine" is, at the very least, a pretty fair port in a storm of Hollywood crap.

Life Blood (2009 Video)

Buffy the Holy Vampire Avenger

[1/10 · 26 March 2010]

This "film" was made for people who were severely, nay - obsessively, disappointed that there wasn't more lesbianism on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I mean, why else would anyone make this half-hearted attempt at a movie? The plot, as divined from the back of the Burger King bag upon which it was scrawled, involves God (!) coming down to earth to select an earthly avenger. (Seems people didn't learn from that whole 40 day flood thing and she's cheesed off again.) God's plan for the chastisement of humanity? Simple - make a randomly selected lesbian into an unstoppable vampire killing machine and send her out to smite the wicked.

Seriously.

Yes, that's the best plan an omniscient, omnipresent and omni-benevolent Deity could come up with - a plot that would have been rejected by the pea-brained corporate cretins who run cable TV. And SHE created US? And the world and everything in it? AND She screws even *that* up, if you can believe it. When her chosen earthly avatar pleads for the life of her lover, who also happens to be a psychopathic killer, God takes pity and turns her, too, into an unstoppable vampire.

Did I say 'omniscient?' Sorry. I meant 'dumb as a bag of hammers.' All that is just the set up for the ultimate battle between the scantily clad lesbians of good and evil. That makes it sound a lot more interesting than it is, since there wasn't nearly enough budget for an apocalyptic showdown. In fact, there was barely enough for a minor skirmish between the forces of nice and mean. The only upside to this apocalyptic train wreck is that the evil vampire lesbian gets to kill as annoying a bunch of bit players, extras and has-beens as has ever been assembled.

Certainly not enough to build a movie around, nu? But that's the real secret of "Murder World." It isn't really a movie. "Murder World" is poorly made masturbation material for lonely vampire-obsessed comic book collecting fan-boys. Everyone else - feel free to avoid this sticky mess like you would one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt.

Court of Lonely Royals (2006)

Food Court of Emo Hit men

[2/10 · 19 March 2010]

You know what's more annoying than sparkly vampires? Mopey killers, as this film so amply proves.

Undiscernably set in the near future, the film follows a pair of disaffected, twentyish emo contract killers who work for a cop that hangs out in a food court. In between unbearably long periods of staring off into space, our apathetic assassins kill people using their lethal powers of ennui. Well, that and a number of ridiculously staged coincidences.

But even after the miserable murderers find girlfriends (as improbably as that sounds) the film still can't find a pulse and we're treated to another eternity of anguished aimlessness before the final non-conclusion puts us out of *our* misery. Stay away from this one unless your an emo teen. Or comatose. Or both.

The Fourth Kind (2009)

Sub-sub-par Blair Witch

[1/10 · 27 February 2010]

Filmed with all the charm and grace of a 70's vintage Sun International "documentary" on bigfoot, "The Fourth Kind" does for UFO abduction what Judith Miller's WMD reporting did for the journalistic credibility of The New York Times. And yet, despite a desperate effort to hide their utter lack of cinematic skills with verite riffs, the makers of "The Fourth Kind" fail even to manage that. Quite a trick - if you think about it.

At it's best the movie is a confused muddle of film school editing tricks and cheap scares. At it's worst, the film's amateur nite cinematography and cheeseball writing combine to actively offend the viewer. Yes, this is a film that boldly says to it's audience - "We already got your eight bucks, so eff-you, suckers!"

Ink (I) (2009)

An interesting experiment

[7/10 · 21 February 2010]

Fanboys hate it. Auteurists love it. So what to make of this film? It's an independent production, which means fanboys won't forgive it's minimal f/x and amateur fight choreography while auteurists will love it's raw indy look. However, despite some awkwardness on both fronts, the f/x and choreography are better than one might expect.

It's under written, sure. Under written to the point where it can't be explained away by it's indy production origins. On the other side, it's chock-a-block full of ideas - some interesting and some just plain silly. Truthfully, imagination makes up for a lot.

It's plot is complex and doesn't go to much trouble explaining itself. Auteursts love that kind of self absorption while fanboys hate anything that isn't spelled out for them in big block letter. Ink may tilt a little to the auteurist side, but not egregiously so.

Sum up. In an environment where 99.9% of all films are boring studio product, Ink gets props for even trying to do something different. Even where it fails, and it does in several places, it fails from a point of strength. 7/10

Dance of the Dwarfs (1983)

"Romancing the Stone" it's not.

[1/10 · 17 October 2009]

In fact, this puddle of cinematic up-chuck came in a full year before Zemeckis' adventure/romance. But whereas Douglas and Turner were able to generate a few sparks, Fonda and Raffin's relationship just kind of sits there, forlorn and pathetic, like a wet lump of used Kleenex.

Fonda is the only helicopter pilot in the entire South American country of Whereeverania. Raffin is the US anthropologist who hires him to fly out into the jungle so she can visit a colleague about a mysterious tribe of pygmies he's discovered. Along the way insults get flung, tables get turned, and the dad from "Good Times" shows up as an African witchdoctor who has inexplicably decided to take a holiday trip to the amazon.

If that last bit sounds stupid, well, it only gets worse.

The entire production is about as exciting as an NPR pledge drive and by the time this thing finally drags to a climax it makes "A Prairie Home Companion" seem like Bullitt by comparison. Unless you're the hardest of hard core bad movie fans, avoid this one like you would a rabid dog.

The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

A train wreck of a movie

[2/10 · 24 April 2009]

So it's come to this. It finally took terror has-been Clive Barker to pound the last nail in the coffin of cinematic horror, and the hammer he used is called "Midnight Meat Train." Once an innovator in the horror field, Barker's train left the station years ago (right around the time his head disappeared up his own fundament) leaving in his wake a string of increasingly irrelevant, gore-soaked productions.

Barker's latest clocks in at 98 minutes, which is about 48 minutes too long for the amount of material he's working with. As the hackneyed plot unfolds, Bradley Cooper follows mad butcher Vinnie Jones around the New York subway system, watching in terrified fascination as Vinnie murders people in increasingly improbably and stupid ways. Then several astonishingly predicable things happen. Then you start to wonder what's on ESPN 12. The End.

That's about the best I can sum up "Midnight Meat Train." It only remains to be seen if fellow "masters of horror" has-beens Tobe Hooper and George Romero can top Clive's latest foray into the cliché ridden wastes of gore porn that western horror films have become.

300 (2006)

THE Gay Event Film of 2006!

[1/10 · 11 April 2009]

Where oh where to start? The Spartan's leather panties and opera cape outfits were simply fabulous, as was the "Persians" rough-trade facial piercings. Kinky King Leo's beard/wife was suitably wooden and inconsequential. But oh! All those buff, oiled and CGI enhanced manly man muscles! Who knew that Greece was just one big Gold's Gym?

Seriously, everyone already knows the adolescent revenge fantasy + homoerotic subtext formula of comic book movies by now. Why embarrass the obese little pud-pulling weenie-wiggling sexually-confused fanboys with a movie this obvious? Even the film's crotch-tugging target audience must begin to notice the obvious contempt that the filmmakers hammered into every scene. Why push it in their pudgy faces? LEAVE THE FANBOYS ALONE!!!

Dog Day (1984)

Idiotic

[1/10 · 13 March 2009]

"Canicule" leaves so many questions unanswered. Was the relationship between Lee Marvin's character and the retarded farm boy supposed to be touching, comical or teeth-grindingly stupid? Was the reason Tina Louise disappeared entirely from the film because the editor was a drunken ham-fisted film school reject? What is Tina Louise's character even doing in this film? Did the director just fly around in a helicopter shouting "Wheeeeee!" the entire shoot while the rest of the crew sat around snorting coke and going 'Zut Alors! Zis New Wave film making - it is fantastique!' or something? So many questions...

Okay, long story short. Lee Marvin, dressed as a 1930's gangster, robs an armored car and shoots a bunch of cops and a pre-schooler, then lams it to the French countryside where he's captured by a repulsive bunch of inbred French rednecks. Sound interesting? It isn't. The cops overfly the farm about a ga-zillion times looking for Lee, each shot lovingly filmed from another helicopter (the one where the director was yelling "Wheeeeee!") (or "Le Wheeeeee!" since he's French) but can't find him because he's always in the barn setting fires or strangling nymphomaniacs or whatever.

But here's the depressing part. Ready? Despite being a film built solely around the image of Lee Marvin standing around in a wheat field, "Canicule" would be considered a cinematic masterpiece today if it were made by Quentin Tarantino and starred Bruce Willis and Angelina Jolie. It wants to be parody but rarely rises to the level of stick-figure cartoon, in other words the perfect film for a society of porn obsessed violence addicts like the US.

"Wheeeee!"

The Last Winter (2006)

Please, stop trying to help.

[4/10 · 2 December 2008]

No doubt this film was made with the best of educational intentions. Permafrost thaw is indeed a very real and very serious problem, a part of the positive feedback loop that affects global warming. It's certainly something that people should know about.

But, honestly, ghostly herds of caribou running around the sub-artic like the creatures in Pitch Black? This is not, repeat, NOT helpful.

Movies like Starlight, The Day After Tomorrow, and this misfire do more harm to the environmental movement than any goose-stepping right-wing froth-at-the-mouth blowhard like Limbaugh or Hannity.

It's difficult enough to get the average American to care about the glaringly obvious environmental changes on our planet without having some sub-moronic jack-booted boy-man pop up and sneer about how he once saw this one movie with global warming and ghost caribou and that guy from The Name of the Rose.

Iron Man (2008)

A steaming pile of CGI garbage.

[1/10 · 14 November 2008]

Featuring the very latest in computer generated effects and a plot that would insult a retarded six year old, Ironman is the latest in a long line of Hollywood product culled from the dizzying literary heights of superhero comic books.

Product this disposable doesn't happen by accident. Teams of industry product makers work around the clock for years to make something this tasteless, tedious and utterly bland. Don't even try to characterize this product as a "movie." It simply isn't.

If Ironman was edible, it would be a jar of baby food. Library paste flavored baby food. If it were music, it would be chopsticks. If it were a vehicle, it would be a tricycle. A tricycle with training wheels. If it were...

What? Oh yeah, the product. It's something about the usual gazillionaire playboy who flies around in a sooper-dooper extra-gadgety metal suit and frees Afghanistan from the Evil Brown People, making the country safe for, I dunno, oil companies I guess. The plot is such a pile of moronic sub-juvenile drivel it's impossible to focus on for more than a few minutes before being distracted by something more interesting like, say, the butter-flavored grease stains on the bottom of your popcorn bag.

Contempt for it's audience drips from every frame of this product. No doubt the droolcase fanboy target audience will be thrilled to down to their Batman Under-Roos by Downey's lackluster performance as he sleepwalks through the product's repulsive hero role. The product is certainly simple enough for people who regard Cheetos as food group and think repetitively boring video games are the apex of computer technology.

But aside from it's pimply focus group, the only other audiences to which this product could possibly appeal would be coma patients and Scientologists. And you'd probably have to tie down the coma patients.

The Ghosts of Edendale (2003)

Bleh.

[3/10 · 30 October 2008]

I'd love to report that The Ghosts of Edendale is a little gem of an no-budget indy horror film. But if I were to make such a comparison, the gem in question would be a garnet. Sure, it's kinda pretty. But it's also a dime-a-dozen.

Technological advances always drive independent film making and there's always a market for cheaply made horror films. That's the only two reasons I can think of why Ghosts of Edendale exists. Calling it "woefully underdeveloped" is the most charitable thing I can think to describe this effort.

Calling it "a mediocre waste of time" is the most honest.

Freedom Deep (1998)

Possibly the worst movie ever to come out of Australia!

[1/10 · 28 July 2008]

Take "Six-String Samurai," suck every last bit of humor and talent out of it, set it in Australia and it STILL wouldn't be as awful as this unwatchable mess of self-obsessed celluloid.

Not so much a movie as it is a horrendously long, mind-bendingly pretentious music video - "Freedom Deep" may very well qualify for Legendary Bad Movie status. At the very least it has to be one of the most toxically self-indulgent train wrecks since "Lisztomania" - which is an achievement of sorts, I suppose.

The film's story, such as it is, concerns the efforts of Liam to bring the holy word of Kurt Cobain (!) to a suffering, nuke-ravaged humanity. Interspersed with this epic quest are flash backs to Liam's youth when he was a pudgy, abused kid who looks abso-tootly-ootly nothing like his older self.

If the plot of this film sounds even mildly interesting - it's not. It's tedious and trite by turns and the film's only saving grace is that there's no dialog. Indeed, I can't even begin to imagine how teeth-grindingly awful this mis-begotten mess would be if we had to listen to these characters speak.

I Am Omega (2006 Video)

You gotta be kidding me!

[1/10 · 2 December 2007]

I've only seen a few of these Asylum direct-to-video ripoffs, so I can't definitively say that this is the absolute worst piece of garbage ever produced by that esteemed company. But, if it isn't, then I honestly can't imagine the film that would be considered worse than I Am Omega.

The plot really isn't worth describing in any detail. Just take the rage zombies from 28 Days Later... and slap them into a decimated version of Omega Man and you've pretty much got the entire film. As slap-dash as the whole thing is, at least the crappy soundtrack helps obscure both the actors lack of talent and the scripts lack of anything resembling coherence.

Not that this gawdawful turd's target market is looking for witty repartee, mind you. But even the action fanboy drool-cases who stumble upon this thing thinking they've found Lawrence's I Am Legend must feel vaguely cheated at the unique cheapness of this least-effort ripoff.

Mulberry St (2006)

Anzioooooo!

[2/10 · 21 November 2007]

Somewhere in New York City there exists a ratty apartment building (get it? huh? get it?) that houses every veterans from every single US war since the War of 1812. And yet, despite being jam-packed to the rafters with soldiers old and new, it's also a building that contains not a single, solitary firearm. No, not so much as a BB gun.

And if you believe that, you'll just love this half-baked 28 Days Later ripoff. Substitute rat people for rage zombies and over-weening auteurism for real talent, add a few well-worn tropes from Night of the Living Dead, and you've got a sure-fire formula for 85 minutes of grue, plot holes, rat puns and exactly zero suspense.

Tooth and Nail (2007)

Oh god....

[1/10 · 21 November 2007]

We're deep into student film territory with this one. After an apocalypse in which the world just kinda runs right out of oil (yes, you read that right) a group of college students with names culled from the faculty parking lot are besieged by a handful of extras left over from The Road Warrior.

The students are lead by a slumming Robert Carridine, and Rider Strong is back from his Mexican spring break adventures in Borderland. Among the cannibals are Michael Madsen and Vinnie Jones, both playing characters who can be out witted by a 12 year old child.

This film does for peak oil what The Day After Tomorrow did for climate change - set the cause back about ten years. I'm not sure I want to live in a world where everyone above the Mason-Dixon has moved to Tallahasse. In fact, I'm sure I don't.

Crazy Eights (2006)

Don't believe the morons

[1/10 · 21 November 2007]

The last in this years HorrorFest line up (and not a moment to soon), this film also wins the award for Most Promising Premise Trashed By Sheer Incompetence. It's part The Big Chill and part Silent Hill, all rolled up in a script desperately in need of four or five rewrites.

Okay, long story short. Six friends get together after a seventh dies and begin uncovering long buried secrets of their shared past. Sound good? Well, it isn't. The plot spins off into things-happen-for-no-reason territory shortly after we hit the point where the character's predicament becomes painfully obvious to everyone but them.

From there on, all the usual horror film tropes are visited upon us, from the relatively modern cell-phones-that-never-work to the ancient let's-split-up-so-The-Evil-can-kill-us-easier. Unfortunately, even counting the clichés becomes boring long before the film ends.

Borderland (2007)

Traffic + Texas Chainsaw Massacre = Borderland

[2/10 · 10 November 2007]

I was wondering when someone would try turning that whole Matamoros mess into a goreporn pic. Anyroad, here's a few things I learned about Mexico from watching this film.

~All Mexican Women Are Super Hot - Remember that little desert town in Unearthed? Yeah, well, this must be it's Mexican sister city. Don't even bother with the hookers, just put a few smooth moves on the hot bartender. She'll be just as hot as the prostitutes and probably doesn't have any kids as well!

~Half of Mexico is controlled by insane Satan-worshiping Palo Mayombe cultists. ¡Ay, caramba! The other half, as everyone here in the U.S. knows, is run by drug dealers. Fortunately, this doesn't much interfere with the sex-tourisim trade and our ultra-low wage factories down there.

~Mexican cops are useless. Don't go to them. Go to the nearest occult bookstore and ask the hot chick behind the counter what happened to your vanished friend. She'll be way more help than the cops.

~When you're being gruesomely tortured by the aforementioned bloodthirsty cultists, don't go reciting the Psalms or any part of the Bible, really. You'll just mess up the mojo.

The Lost Platoon (1990)

A complete waste of celluloid

[1/10 · 29 January 2007]

One day, a guy went to see his brother and said: "Hey'um bro! I just went and seen a motion picture film show called Near Dark." And his brother said: "Well, I jest saw me a movie called Platoon." Then the two brothers began describing their individual flimic experiences at the same time, talking over each other louder and louder until it seemed they were talking about the same film.

Then they wrote it all down on the back of a Piggy Wiggly bag and called it "The Lost Platoon." The Lost Platoon is proof positive that no matter where you go, everyplace looks pretty much the same as everyplace else. In this case, France and Nicaragua both look pretty much like Turkeycrap Alabama.

With great steaming hunks of inane right-wing dialog ripped bleeding from the pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine and salted with ill-remembered scenes ripped off from the poorer Schwartzenegger films, The Lost Platoon inches it's way through 86 minutes of alternating hilarious and tedious footage.

By all indications, the bring-your-own-fatigues invitational shoot was a huge success, judging from the number of obese loser militia types that showed up to be filmed firing off their M-16s with near orgasmic glee. Adding to the film's woody setting is the acting, which at least is semi-obscured by the amateur-nite direction.

But even more offensive to even the most brain-dead movie goer is the film's near incoherent grasp of history. Dates are bobbled. Uniforms glaringly inaccurate. At one point a picture supposedly taken during WW II clearly shows a WW I vintage tank.

Die-hard fans of both vampire flicks and '80 style action should avoid this film with extreme prejudice.

Starlight (1996)

The film that set the environmental movement back 10 years!

[1/10 · 23 November 2006]

I shudder to think what people must have thought of environmentalists after viewing this piece of overbearing, preachy cinematic trash. Larded with enough Indian-wannabe nuttery and space brother buffoonery to stock a new-age shop, Starlight makes anyone who gives a damn about the planet look like a feather-wearing crystal-fondling idiot.

The plot? Alien Rae Dawn Chong arrives to guide a flute playing underwear model in a mystical quest to avert Earth's impending environmental collapse. But first they must defeat an evil alien who looks nothing so much like a refugee from a Castro street bar. Fortunately, they've got mystical grandpa Willie Nelson along to help (who looks faintly embarrassed by the proceedings, as well he ought to be) along with buckets of cheap F/X and reams of pointlessly swelling music.

Sure, the clunky script helps to obscure the film's trite plot and staggering pace, but that's just the tip of this melting movie iceberg. Everyone concerned with this film should have their union cards revoked until they complete a real course in environmental science.