Subject: Review: Armageddon (1998)

From: [email-masked] (Matthew Dalton)
Date: 22 Feb 1999 06:28:26 GMT

REVIEW 'Armageddon' 

Rated PG13, 1998
1.5 stars
Reviewed by Matthew Dalton 

 Right in the midst of Deep Impact comes Armageddon: a clunker of a movie about
an asteroid the size of Texas on a collision course with earth.

 The first 10 minutes of this film are pretty entertaining, and, downright
spectacular. A comet shower (not detected by NASA) rains on an American
spaceship and blows the thing up good before it proceeds to New York City. 

 Of course, soon after, producer Jerry Bruckheimer digs into stupidity with
holes in the script big enough to drive a comet the size of Texas through.

 NASA wants to keep the disaster under wraps, and does so. How the hell can you
keep the news of NYC in ruins a matter of top-secret information? Easy. Get
director Michael Bay to scope out more digital effects than one can count, and
you lose all sight of reality.

 NASA, soon after the apocalyptic mess, finds out about said asteroid and hires
the world's best oil driller (Bruce Willis, in another Bruce Willis role) to
plant nuclear bombs on the surface of the asteroid in hopes of splitting the
thing in two.

 Willis and his wise-ass crew (including Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi, doing
his Con Air role all over again) go into space, where, lo, more special effects
and over-the-top acting reached heights of me ripping out my eyeballs.
 
 Deep Impact was so real and scary that another comet flick the same year
seemed uncanny, like Volcano when it trailed Dante's Peak in 1997 (I prefered
Peak over Volcano). Impact had characters worth caring for. Armageddon has
zero. The script is so small and lame-brained, that, when in doubt, the
characters ask each other "Are we gonna make it?"

 Like Con Air, and The Rock, Armageddon is an FX-ridden, unfun, unfunny, flashy
film that is a true disaster. Don't forget to check your emergancy exits in the
theater before viewing this garbage.

***** a classic  **** excellent  *** good  ** fair  * poor

-Matthew Dalton is a critic for the Cinemascope Limited Inc. Weekly-