ARMAGEDDON

A film by Michael Bay

Starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi, Liv Tyler, and Billy Bob Thornton

WHEW! Summer blockbusters don't get much bigger than ARMAGEDDON, a 2 hour 30 minute ride through outer space. You think Godzilla was big? Or Deep Impact? Forget a creature as big as the Empire State Building, forget a comet the size of NYC, ARMAGEDDON's got a big asteroid the size of Texas hurtling its way here within two weeks. In that time, the US government recruits, trains, and launches the world's best oil-rig drillers to save the planet?

Farfetched? ARMAGEDDON makes the THE X-FILES seem like a docudrama. But that's not the point. Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer are in the business of making classic popcorn movies, movies that are completely enjoyable and forgettable. In that sense, they succeed. There isn't much of a plot, simply because Tyler and Affleck don't carry the same kind of chemistry needed to produce a decent subplot. Willis is as macho as ever as Harry Stamper, the leader of this rag-tag crew that's going to save the planet. The movie flows with testosterone, and is filled with macho, big-bang explosions and meteors clobbering the earth.

While it's fun, and while the movie is rapid, there's one huge problem: overkill. Bay and Bruckheimer want to top everything. Literally. So they constructed a movie almost 3 hours long filled with explosions. The one problem is overkill. Bay and Bruckheimer fail to stop: they just keep on going, making the film one endless explosion after another. The plot's predictable, and the movie starts to lose steam in the middle. During the space sequences, bad lighting mixed with Bay's frenetic editing makes about a good 30 minutes of the movie almost incoherent, with running cameras on blurred images. Explosion after explosion rock the movie, as nothing goes right for our fearless warriors. Bay and Bruckheimer failed to ease up on the craziness, expecting the audience to get emotionally attached, so that they would feel the highs and lows.

That's not easy to do with the poor characterization. The only fun from this crew comes from Affleck and Buscemi, who have the best lines in the movie. Still, there's no denying ARMAGEDDON isn't fun. It has its moments, and there's a lot to like in this film. It's not smart entertainment, it relies on sheer overpowering to carry its viewers, and there are a lot of really neat sequences. You just leave with a feeling of disappointment, because there's TOO much to like. The action is brain-numbing, so that the last hour goes by in a blur. It's an enjoyable ride, but Bay, who tames his frenetic touch in the beginning, restarts it again at the end, causing the film to be a big collage of fast-paced images. The film is just too long, and too big for its own good. It's a fun ride, but in the end, it's just too big. There's too much in this film to be truly effective. If about a half-hour was cut from this film, it would be a lot easier to take.

Overall, although an enjoyable blockbuster that's ten times better than Godzilla, ARMAGEDDON just isn't good enough. THE X-FILES and THE TRUMAN SHOW were better films, and more enjoyable. Maybe it's because they were shorter?

OVERALL: ** 1/2 out of ****

Movie Reviews by Sridhar Prasad

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