the audience applauded

Simply Perfect

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This movie is dreadful. It has a boring plot, seeded with cliché; horribly written dialogue; and acting that is equivalent to a high school film project or a local commercial. There's even an unnecessary "lost father" bit thrown in that "ties up" at the end when the father says to his daughter "that's a long story." It's even sexist. The selfish daughter runs away from home to get attention, punches a guy in the face, and he's carted off to jail for it; I wish she was caught by the tornado and impaled on a telephone pole---then the story would have made sense. The only thing good about this movie are the storm graphics which are fairly well done, but even this is ruined by the sound effects---stock monster groans that are repeated over and over again. Perhaps having the storm sound like a demon would have been effective if (1) they used something I haven't heard before in every monster movie or video game I've ever watched or played, and (2) they played it only once and very quietly so it's a subtle comment on how nature can sometimes mirror the hellish nightmares we thought were confined to our imaginations, not my Spooktastic Halloween Sound Effects Vol. 2 CD stuck on the part where the werewolf attacks.

First of all I had to view this movie at a friend's home because despite the fact that I emailed Lifetime several times, they did not provide the option for "Every Woman Counts" on my Charter on demand to select that movie although they have been advertising it for weeks. It was interesting although the Science and Meterology data was faulty and at times just made up to suit the occasion. But nevertheless I enjoyed it. The story was engaging and the action scenes had something for everyone.The acting was very good. Direction although problematic with the subject at hand, caused the story to unfold and flow very well.

This one hurt. And I'm usually a sucker for really bad Twister ripoffs made for cable. We've seen this plot before, twice. Estranged parent-child relationship, because said parent is too devoted to chasing that big storm. Parent is obsessed with storms because of a tragedy in their childhood. Parent predicts The Big One will hit right where estranged child lives. Child doesn't believe them. Child has has several tense emo moments with parent. Big tornado predictably hits, key characters survive, and everyone is happy. See "Devil Winds" and "Tornado Warning" for this by -the-numbers plot as well. Amusingly, they use global warming for an excuse to "move" Tornado Alley to the pacific northwest so they could shoot cheaply in Vancouver. As expected, the tornado effects are lackluster. The CGI crew just rendered the same tornado for every scene. I think what really got to me was the darkness of the movie. By that I do not mean a grim undertone to the story... but rather how literally dark the image was throughout. I spent a lot of time straining to make out various details like character faces and locales. The environment around a tornado can be very dark, but this was done throughout the movie. I can only recommend this to people who didn't think it could get any worse than Atomic Twister.

A very fifty-something-looking Mimi Rogers cast as a thirty-something college prof is just the FIRST of many absurd incongruities that make this film hard to stomach. Much of the script and action are so completely inane that suspending disbelief enough to enjoy the story for its timely dramatic premise is just not do-able. For example, we cut in one scene to the lead (Mimi Rogers') character's teenaged daughter sitting forlornly in front of her school, which -- despite its rather formidable-looking concrete and steel construction -- has just been torn to shreds by a not particularly strong tornado. Even though mom arrived minutes after the tornado hit (and had to evade a police roadblock to do so) the daughter -- who had, by the way, ignored an earlier cellphone message from weather-guru mom warning of the impending twister -- tears a strip off mom, apparently for not being there with her while the school was being torn apart ("Where were you? I was here by myself! I was sooooo embarrassed!")