Let me explain to you how I work: Usually I don't see movies in a theater. I don't have that kind of time or money and its really hard to take notes in the dark, with no flat surface, and balance a bucket of popcorn at the same time. Consequently, most movies are spared my wrath.

But when they get to video. . .oh baby!!

Such is the case with Armageddon. This testosterone bad boy from Bad Boys director Michael Bay was released in the heat of summer and has sense gone on to make 200 million domestically.

After watching it I have no idea why.

I have a few theories. . .but more on that later.

Now, however I will tell you the plot, such as it is. I suppose the first sign of doom (that I should have paid attention to but didn't) were the words "Jerry Bruckheimer" that showed up in the credits under the title of producer. The second sign of trouble was the opening barrage of SPFX in which most of New York City is bombed out by basket ball size chunks of rock from outer space. Its discovered that those are just the little ones, and one big one, about "the size of Texas" as one character puts it, is going to hit us in 18 days.

Right then and there I started asking questions. Ones like "How the hell could we miss a hunk of Rock 9,000 square miles across?" The script just explains it away by having NASA man Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) saying, "Its a big ass sky out there." Uh-huh. Right. Sure. While this might be enough to satisfy most people (considering how much this movie has made) its not enough for me. I can not believe that, in these cynical times, I'm the only one who has any faith in the human race and our technology. I mean, we have the Hubbell telescope for a reason. That thing could spot me flipping a coin in the middle of Broadway, and tell me which end it landed on. I think we can spot an asteroid 9,000 square miles across.

But I digress. I admit that I didn't come to this conclusion immediately. The movie moves so fast during it's early scenes (not the words "early scenes") under the direction of Michael Bay that we aren't allowed to muddle over the plot holes. At least, not for long.

Where was I? Oh, yes: since you have an asteroid the size of Texas coming down on us why not get a man from Texas to take it out? At least I think Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis) is from Texas. He starts out the movie with a Texan accent, but he loses it about 10 minuets after his character is introduced. But regardless, he's the best damn oil driller in the world and so he gets the job of going off world.

By now I was asking myself, "Why don't they just blow the damn thing to smithereens while its out of our orbit?" Well the movie shoots down that suggestion real fast. For some reason, the asteroid can take all the direct hits we can throw at it. But if we drill down into the asteroid and then nuke it, the 'roid will break into two pieces and sail peacefully around the earth.

Right. At about this point in the story I began thinking just who the hell wrote this script and what kind of drug they where doing at the time. Turns out that this movie had 9, count 'um, 9, screenwriters. One would think that one could have been enough to produce something worthwhile. But no, this story was passed from writer to writer in a desperate attempt to save it. They failed.

Anywho, since the government needs people to drill into the 'roid they pick Stamper and his crew of roughnecks. Each of these roughnecks has the intelligence of the average brick and the sense of humor to match. I stopped trying keep track of the number of crude, rude, and otherwise unfunny jokes (mostly supplied by Steve Buscemi) when the number reached into the mid teens. And these people have to be trained to work in zero-gravity environments, and endure all the heavy duty astronaut training that NASA puts its people through.

And they have to do this in 18 days.

Right.

Now, wouldn't have made more sense to train the people who are already astronauts to work a drill rather then train the drillers (I've seen trained chimps smarter then these people) to be astronauts? In this world yes, but not in the world of Armageddon, oh nooooo! In Armageddon's universe NASA can design multi million dollar sophisticated computers that can transmit signals from other planets, but can't design a simply drill. The message here is that intellectuals, for all they're intelligence, aren't really that smart, and the stupid, working class people, are, and always will be, the heros.

Right.

What does this movie think I am? A six-year-old?

Actually I think this movie might have been written by six-year-olds. 9 of them. And instead of fixing the script the nine writers thought it might be good to add on things of they're own. You can see the plot elements that enter, last about 5 minuets, and then disappear. There's this whole thing about one of the roughnecks ex-wife and his kid, it runs about 10 minuets and doesn't go anywhere. And they there's this whole sequence about "space dementia". Has anyone ever heard of this? Does it even exist? I think not.

Then we get our love story. This time between one of the roughnecks, A.J. (Ben Afleck) and Stamper's daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler). Nether of them can act and both characters are forgettable. It makes me wanta snore and barf at the same time.

While some plot elements go nowhere the ones that do go exactly where you expect them too. Here's a good game to play: 30 minuets into the movie stop the tape, get a pin and some paper and make a list of all the characters, they're motivations, and everything they have done up to this point. Then try to guess what they will do for the remaining portion of the movie. Odds are your gonna be right, or you'll come up with even better ideas the the 9 screenwriters did.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Man, he's really harping the fact that this movie has 9 screenwriters." Well. . .that's a lot of screenwriters and it makes the story really incoherent.

Director Bay doesn't help much. Instead, he directs the movie will all the ability of a man with a man live shark stuffed down his pants. His camera angles jump from place to place without rime or reason. I dare you to find a place in this movie where the camera stays in one place for more then 5 seconds. Not that I would want you to waste your time on this thing that is.

Then they're the acting. Or complete lack there of. Bruce Willis is. . .Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, Brucy hasn't turned out any of worth as of late (except Twelve Monkeys). Does Harry S. Stamper have any emotion other then anger? Or did Bay simply say, "Did you just show a facial expression? Never mind, we'll fix it in editing. Time to blow something else up."

And what was Mikey thinking in the editing room? Not much apparently, since, by the time we actually get to a good action sequence (90 minuets into the movie, 90 minuets that allowed me to mull over all the little, and big, plot holes for lack of anything else to do) its so incoherently put together that I couldn't tell who was who and what was what. After 3 minuets and 5 explosions, I just gave up. My brain doesn't have the power to separate all the images. Lets just say this movie is a good reason why music video directors should not be allowed to direct movies.

That's another thing: Everything explodes in this movie. Everything. And for no good reason. WHY GOD DAMNIT?!!

Who knows? Who cares?

The rest of the cast is one-dimensional. I don't care about them and you probably won't ether. One gets the feeling that, if it weren't for Stamper, they would kill themselves from there own stupidity. Stamper is Moe and the rest of them are his Stooges.

As I mentioned before I have a theory as to why this movie is so popular. The whole attitude throughout the movie is one of anti-intellectualism. The big, dumb, working class hero triumphs over all while all the smart people stand uselessly. Its this kind of 'tude that I haven't seen in a movie since some really bad 1950s sci-fi that I'll force myself to rewatch some day.

This kind of attitude (and the fact that I counted 6 American flags and one shot of JFK inserted into the background) is probably why this movie is so popular. Besides insulting those of us with intelligence it also proves that, no mater how stupid the script, how dull the acting, how piss poor the directing, as long as you slap the stars and stripes all over something patriotic Americans will eat it up from sea to shining sea. Maybe France is right; maybe we American's don't have good taste.

I could go on and on about this movie and how bad it is, but it really isn't worth it. I don't have the time and this movie is starting to bore me again. I'm going to have to slap myself to both wake myself up and (hopefully) put this piece of crap out of my mind. For, if nothing else, this movie does the second worse thing a movie can do, short of boring me (but it does that to): It assumes I'm stupid too, and that pisses me off!

And another thing! A lot of reviews of this movie started out with the following sentience: "This movie is not as bad as Godzilla (1998)." Here's the truth people: Godzilla is Casablanca next to this piece of crap. End of story.

RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

ROGER EBERT BACKS ME UP, AS IF THAT MEANS ANYTHING.

HOME  VAULT  RATINGS  MISSION STATEMENT  LINKS

E-MAIL GOES TO dr_psy_chosis@hotmail.com

GODZILLA   TRADEMARK 1999  TOHO CO., LTD.