Philip Seymour Hoffman Fest: Twister

1996 weather movie

Rating: 10/20 (Emma: 11/20; Abbey: 8/20)

Plot: CGI tornadoes roar through the Midwest while Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt fall back in love with each other.

Those tornadoes look really good, though sluggish. Of course, I've always thought tornadoes were sexy, sadistic twisting bitches. But this movie is less story and more an excuse to show off the titular weather phenomenon, and after the initial "Look at them tornadoes!" moment, interest wanes. Cows flailing around, water tornadoes, swirling leaves and crap. It just gets boring, especially once you realize that most of the sound effects just involve people growling. And then, even if you're a meteorologist, you're forced to focus on the plot. There's a conflict involving rival storm chasers, but you won't care about that at all. There's the rekindling romance between the divorcing Paxton and Hunt, but you won't like either of them. Nor will you like Paxton's new girlfriend. And there's the whole backstory about with Hunt's childhood experience with an F-5 tornado that makes her career choice seem perfectly logical, at least in a movie this dumb. I mean, if you watched your dad sucked into a tornadic abyss when you were a child, why wouldn't you want to work in a career that reminded you of that every day? "So, what made you decide to work in the circus?" "Well, when I was a little boy, I watched a clown kill and eat my father." "Oh, that makes sense." I don't know if I hate Bill Paxton exactly, but I hate him so much in this movie, that I'm pretty sure I just hate him altogether. The script doesn't help him, and neither does the way his character is written. I think a child must have written this because the characters say all these stupid obvious things. "Hurry...let's go...we have to get this heavy thing off your aunt." Awful dialogue from awful characters. At one point, somebody makes the claim that Paxton's character is not in all this for the money but for the science. A few minutes later, he's punching off a guy's hat because his design--a metallic contraption filled with Christmas ornaments--was stolen. What about the science, Bill? Paxton's throwing out this cool guy schtick but gets lines like "What a wiener" which is just embarrassing. My favorite Bill Paxton moment is when Hunt, sarcastically, says "She's nice" and he replies "Ha!" a little like Nicolas Cage would. Jeremy Davies, a guy who can't control his own hands, is also in this as part of the ragtag crew. I don't like that guy. Philip Seymour Hoffman's also there and is easily the best thing about the movie as he talks about the suck zone, screams "Whoo-hoo!" out the window of the Barn Burner, drinking from a ceiling straw, trash-talking the competing storm chasers, saying things like "imminent rue-age," and screaming all his lines. "We got one, baby!" "You just missed that truck! Awesome! Awesome!" He's fun to watch in a movie that is otherwise not that much fun at all. Emma liked him, referring to his character as the druggy guy. I know one thing that could have saved this movie. During a ridiculous scene at a drive-in theater, The Shining is being shown. The tornado eventually (and predictably) rips through the screen, and that's where they missed a golden opportunity. They should have had the tornado grow a face and say, "Here's Johnny!" I would have bumped this up to a 15/20 with that scene. Of course, the product placement--Dodge trucks can apparently survive anything, and when cola cans are needed, they can only find Pepsi--may have caused me to reconsider.