This just goes to show you that you can make a movie that is overbloated by half an hour, filled with incredibly fake looking slick cgi effects, and saddled with some of the clumsiest dialogue in motion pictures and still have an effective film. I almost cried at the end, I swear I did. All the while cursing myself for how cheaply I was being manipulated. That's how this movie seems to work, on an emotional level. On a cheap emotional level. It's not "Love Story". It uses whatever tools it needs to elicit an emotional response. If stock characters, noble sacrifices, sentimentality and ludicrous plot twists are what it takes to get that response then so be it. I went in to this movie with low expectations. There were maybe twelve other people there, which tended to confirm my misgivings. As soon as it started I was swept up in it. I read a comment somewhere recently that said film is not a literary medium. I tend to agree. As literature "Armegeddon" fails miserably. A crappy paperback that you put down near the middle. I think movies somehow touch us more than that. Something about sharing the immediacy of the screen with other people makes it work on us on another, visceral level. Good lines too, better than I would have thought: "Go wake up 11,000 (1,100?) people." A reference to the contingency plan to save congress during the event of a nuclear war. The part where Steve Buscemi rides the bomb like Slim Pickens in "Doctor Strangelove". This is also a good movie to watch Bruce Willis play Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi doing Steve Buscemi, and the fat guy from the Frasier submarine movie playing fat guy from Bruce Willis asteroid movie. On a scale of one to ten I'd give it a 7, but when I was in the theater I'd have probably said nine. Ask me in a week.
Review of Armageddon
