Inondations: Un fleuve en colère

FLOOD: A RIVER'S RAMPAGE is yet another in the long line of TV-made disaster movies that attempt to emulate the biggies on a much smaller scale and budget. This one stars a slumming-it Richard Thomas as the archetypal nice guy who has to step in when the Mississippi bursts its banks and floods a small town.

The plot has two strands that alternate and sometimes join together. First, there's the usual town-must-pull-together type stuff, which is all pretty bad and uninteresting; there are only so many scenes of people building a wall of sandbags that you can take, and the rest of the special effects are virtually nil. The second plot strand involves a stubborn family who refuse to move out of their home, with inevitable results.

There's some cheesy acting to be enjoyed here, along with a solid siege scenario - instead of defending their farmhouse from zombies or birds or killer bees, it's rising water - although by the very nature of it it's all over rather quickly. Thomas is uninteresting as is the rest of the cast and it's all by the numbers, but believe me, there is plenty worse in this genre...