Lluvia de fuego

An astro-physicist is tapped by the government to figure out why the city of San Francisco is being besieged by anti-social meteorites. BB-sized pellets crash a meteor light show stargazing event, and victims run for cover. Immediately, scientists and the military team up to repel the onslaught.

Time out for obligatory clichés: Obnoxios dumbbell TV news crew getting in everybody's hair. General wants to nuke something. Hero guy is married to scientist, and they argue a lot. Their stupid brat kids blunder into perilous locations, always at the exact time and place meteors show up. Hero guy diverts from saving the world to rescue his idiot brat kids. The ratio of cliché stuff to actual plot elements is about 70% to 30%.

The pseudo-scientific ramblings about why San Fran is being singled out are actually pretty imaginative (although ludicrous). Acting is fair. Action and CGI are fair. 99% of the budget was invested in the 500th movie depiction of the collapse of the city's most famous structure. It's done in spectacular fashion; the film's blazing glory moment. But sloppy editing also gives you glaring goofs: like light traffic in the background of a scene, during a supposed massive evacuation of the Bay area. Some evac.

As cheaply done as it may be, it's amusing enough to make it entertaining.

SyFy movies are never going to win awards with their limited budgets and their hastily-written scripts, I realize that. Still, I think that if they had approached this project with some smarts, it could have been a decent time-killer. As it is now, it isn't. For a Canadian production, it looks decent (it doesn't have that "Canadian look"), but it still has a made-for-TV feel to the visuals, and the various British Columbia locations simply can't be passed off as San Francisco. Some of the special effects are okay, but they mostly look cheap and unconvincing, which is probably why long stretches of time go by between special effects shots. But it's the script that really sinks this movie. It's long and drawn out, which is why there is no feeling of tension, and the characters aren't really fleshed out enough. Director Tibor Takács has made some good movies in his career, but "Meteor Storm" is not one of them.

I am a fan of disaster movies and sci-fi movies, unfortunately this was not good at either. Whilst the storyline has been seen before I thought the story unfolded reasonably well, however there was not much substance to it - or science for that matter.

The acting was fair, except I found myself never quite believing the actors - their reactions to situations etc did not fit. I don't know if that is the actors fault or the director but something wasn't quite gelling.

Certainly not the worst film I've seen and worth watching if you need to kill a couple of hours.

Yes, it is yet another disaster movie about an asteroid threatening our very existence of Earth. Like we haven't seen that story being told in movies like dozens of times before.

So what sets "Meteor Storm" apart from the other movies of similar character on the market? Well, nothing actually. I has all been seen before. From the storyline, to the characters and to the bizarre way how disaster and meteoroids seem to be tailing and chasing the protagonists of the movie wherever they go.

One thing that is over-the-top-stereotypical in a movie like this, is how one of the lead "heroes" always manages to get to a scene and rescue someone (be it from a burning helicopter, burning car, or crumbling skyscraper) just in nick of time before it explodes or collapses. That was just antagonizing to watch, because it is such ludicrous crap.

Anyway, moving on to the story. The basic layout of the story is as it is in most other Asteroid disaster movies. A massive asteroid is speeding towards Earth, it manages to wreak some havoc, and then... well, the ending is (without giving it away) a typical Hollywood ending that includes a nuclear missile. Yeah, indeed!

The acting in "Meteor Storm" wasn't actually too bad, but it wasn't any award-winning performances either. Fairly average stuff to be seen here.

In overall, then "Meteor Storm" is good enough entertainment for an evening if you got nothing better to do, and if you are a sucker for natural disaster movies.

I don't need to repeat everything other reviewers noted, but maybe a few:

1. Every disaster flick cliché ever imagined was included. 2. Soldiers, even airmen, don't salute civilians -- except those in direct line of command like the SecDef and the CINC (President). 3. The science is pure hokum. Radio frequencies don't cause attraction or repulsion. If you're gonna blow up stuff in outer space, do it before it starts to heat up from atmospheric friction.

And then a couple no one has as yet mentioned:

4. Brigaders are about as high up the food chain as amoebas. A BG who gets the President on the phone is a joke. 5. I think that element 120 should have been named unbelievium. 6. Toward the end, Keri Matchett who plays the professor (the one who does qualitative analysis by looking through a microscope for Pete's sake) spends the last reel, rather than looking scared, concerned, or dispirited, with a sly smile on her face, as if she knows something none of the rest of us do. Well, she was wrong. A lot of us realized just how silly this whole thing was.