By Marc S. Sanders
Reader, often The Two Unpaid Critics will debate the merits or lack thereof in a film. Usually, one likes the piece while the other does not. It’s rare though when we both find fault with a movie but for entirely different reasons…and we argue about it.
Fair warning, a poorly constructed declaration is coming your way:
Twisters is better than Twister.
However, this is like saying cat shit is tastier than dog shit.
Understand, I had a grand ol’ time watching Twisters with Miguel by my side as the experience quickly gravitated to a Riff Trax viewing. This apparent sequel to the stupidity that was released thirty years ago teaches us more about the nature of tornadoes. Though when I insist that observation to Miguel, my comrade put me to the test and my giggles took hold of me because I couldn’t utter a single scientific fact. Okay. So it’s not that much brainier. Yet, it is brainier!!!
Twisters offers a background and a traumatic dimension to Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who loses all but one of her entire collection of friendly storm chasers in the film’s prologue, and then weepily monologues about it later. That’s what I wanted from Helen Hunt in the first movie. Miguel rightfully questioned why she even needed to speak. We were firsthand witnesses to this early tragedy.
CURSES!!!! You foiled me again, Mig.
Okay, so with my arguments shredded to pieces within our debate, I heed to the fact that I am no Jack Kennedy. Yet, at least I could laugh at how utterly ridiculous Twisters is.
Kate is requested back to her home state of Oklahoma to locate powerful tornadoes that now can be studied with new triangular sensors, each respectively called Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion. That garbage can called Dorothy has been put out to pasture. There’s also a Wizard van. Cute wink and nod names. No Glinda. No Witch. No Munchkin. No Flying Monkey. How lazy can a tornado movie get?
This corporation with the high-tech gear is competing against a convoy of redneck grunge daredevils led by Tyler, The Tornado Wrangler (Glen Powell). He fits the persona with the cowboy hat that Brad Pitt wore in Thelma & Louise, along with the flannel shirts and a big ass belt buckle below his ripped chest.
Tyler’s off road pickup is tricked out with anchors to drill in the ground holding his vehicle in place while he drives right into the middle of a storm. He’ll also launch fireworks straight up into a funnel. Whatever it takes to impress his You Tube followers.
Get this! Tyler is one of the most educated people in the world on meteorology. Has to be true!!!! Absolutely has to be, because Glen Powell would never agree to portray a daredevil redneck without a brain to complement his chestnut hair and five o’clock shadow.
Twisters fails at suspense, but unintentionally wins at outrageous comedy when the movie opts to have its terrible tornadoes attack Americana. As soon as they show small town USA with the little league softball game, I broke out laughing. I was waiting for the homemaker to put out a pie on her windowsill. Where’s Bob Seger singing “Like A Rock” from those Chevy commercials? Tyler, Kate and the gang race to save everyone in town single-handedly without ever calling emergency services. Only ONE COP appears in the whole movie. Fortunately, once the storm moves on from its devastation, there’s a complete clear road with absolutely no debris for the Tyler’s gang to drive on through. I mean does this movie think for itself or what?
We are treated to people flying away and a water tower toppling over. A movie house rips apart while Frankenstein shows on the screen. There’s the inevitable moment when a character gets a leg stuck under wreckage while the others try to get him free but can’t lift him out as the storm bears down. But wait!!!! At just the last second– I saw this in episodes of The Incredible Hulk and CHiPs and…um…well…Twister!
Earlier in the film, Tyler and Kate have an opportunity to settle their differences while taking in a rodeo. Of course, Tyler the redneck meteorologist and Tornado Wrangler used to be a rodeo clown as well.
Then!!!!
What’s this?
“We gotta get these people to safety??”
“Is there a basement around here?”
Apparently, Oklahoma is running low on basements. Not a single basement anywhere in the state where the wind comes sweeping down the plains!!!!!
Twisters fails because it is paint by numbers, and it shouldn’t be. It should never be this transparent. The most unpredictable of weather phenomena is so laughably unsurprising when it should be dazzling and frightening and nail biting. None of it is new. Everything you expect to happen, happens.
This picture even fails at lending a nasty bad guy to its screenplay. The rich old guy with the bolo tie, a true indicator of villainy, tours around the devastation. He’s offering to buy the properties of people who have lost their homes so that further profitability can be made with ongoing research into tornado activity. Yeah. This guy is a regular Darth Vader or Hannibal Lechter, alright. Hang him in the town square and then stone his rotting carcass. Seriously, what’s so wrong with this guy’s intentions? Kate is disgusted for some reason, but if I just lost my house and my farm and my crops and my flat screen and all my blu rays, heck yeah, I’ll take this fat cat’s money.
Miguel refused to write a review for Twisters. However, I’m taking free liberty to share his compounded thoughts. As the end credits rolled over home movie footage of the happy cast, he declared this film is devoid of any kind of suspense, whatsoever. He’s not wrong, and neither am I.
Twisters is better than Twister but for all the wrong reasons.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 