Catégorie 7 - La fin du monde

I watched this on TV last night - yes the whole mini series was shown in one block on Australian TV. The script was like ten different scripts thrown together (from the high winds perhaps?), and there were too many special effect disasters in the first 10 minutes, so there were no suspense built up over the next 3 hours. Jerky and hectic camera work and slow-mo in the middle of dialogue scenes does not create energy and excitement guys. It lacked any bridges between scenes, with people in Paris one second and then Washington DC the next. How many days/months/years was this set over? The lighting and makeup made every female character looked like she had acne and pre-mature aging, but surprisingly the males looked young and clear skinned. In fact it had a music video feel to it - but I don't want to watch a music video for more than 5 minutes. And some scenes were low budget copies of The Day After Tomorrow.

The only reason I wouldn't give this boring and nonsensical mish-mash 0/10 is that it had Cameron Daddo (an Australia ex-TV host) and Shannen Doherty in it. And which ever actor played the male preacher was a hoot. Oh, and it is funny to here the FEMA director outline how the department is the only one to save the day (made pre-Katrina).

Without spoiling it for you if you do end up watching it - the way they 'resolve' the climate change disaster that is threatening to destroy civilisation is just lamo.

2/10

Having suffered through four hours (if you count commercials) of one of the most ambitious, yet disappointing disaster movies of recent times, I have but one observation to make: It is obvious that none of the writers, directors, or producers have ever experienced a real hurricane. I was okay with the tornado mega-storm stuff, even though that was all a stretch, but the "Category Seven" event produced by the combination of the super cell and Hurricane Eduardo (or whatever) was laughable, to say the least. Honestly, you would think that in a year when we have seen the devastation of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, the writers would have at least picked up some real-world hurricane facts by watching the Weather Channel! First, as racerx70 pointed out in a previous posting, they couldn't even get something as simple as the wind speeds right. They said the hurricane had winds of 150mph, which is definitely a Cetrgory 4, albeit a strong one. A "Category 7," however, even if that rating existed, would probably have sustained winds in the 200mph range, and no one would be able to move around DURING THE STORM like those people did. Secondly, where was the rain? Other than what looked like someone driving through a car wash as the hurricane was approaching, the streets were dry in all the subsequent shots. A "Category 7" storm composed entirely of dry air? (Maybe the winds were so strong the rain evaporated!) Third point: How about all the untaped, unboarded, unshuttered glass windows that survived a "Category 7" hurricane without so much as a crack? I loved that part! There were so many shots of the Senator in his office during the height of the storm with the intact, uncovered windows behind him, not to mention all the ones in the laboratory that were equally unprotected and unscathed. (I guess it was a UN-directional hurricane.) The last point that convinces me the writers have no idea of what goes on in a hurricane: The heroes were concerned about talking the powers-that-be to shut off the electricity in DC to rob the storm of fuel. Like they had a choice!!! Do you people (writers, producers) have any idea of what "150 mph" winds do to utility poles, lines, trees, etc., and how quickly power is one of the first things to go when a hurricane hits? Imagine what winds gusts in excess of 200 mph would do? Bottom line: I enjoy a good disaster flick, even ones as far-fetched as this one (and The Day After Tomorrow), and I know something like this requires a great deal of imagination and creativity, but at least do a little research before selling something this big to a major network to broadcast over two nights! (I wonder what the people in Florida and along the Gulf Coast thought of this, assuming that they have power from the last hurricane.)

Ok first the good. The opening scene is cool. I mean, who doesn't want to see a pair of douchebaggy soccer fans get whipped against the Eiffel Tower like a couple of rag dolls? Who doesn't want to see a bunch of snotty French politicians get eaten by a 20ft laughing clown head? Who doesn't want to see the Eiffel Tower twisting around like that 90s dancing baby gif? 10 minutes into the flick I was on my 2nd bucket of popcorn.

Next we get a surprisingly sober initiation to the basic plot, which is even more surprisingly credible and quite prophetic, given the fact that the 2005 writers predicted the 2017 Trump Administration's reversal of all environmental safeguards (so we can all keep our jobs as coal miners). The film's premise is just as much political intrigue as it is mayhem flick: corrupt politicians bury years of environmental science warning us of doomsday, until one day it reaches critical mass and we get an apocalyptic wave of storms (not unlike the ones we had 6 months ago but with more murderous clown heads).

Gina Gershon makes a believable entrance as the new head of FEMA appointed mostly because the government needed a hot babe to do PR for the news cameras. She enters with an air of polite authority, yes a babe but intelligent and in control, actually a really good hero figure, dressed in a cool, conservative suit that makes the world as well as the audience take her seriously.

Oh but pay close attention to her wardrobe as the plot peels away (pun intended). Yes I have graphed a direct, scientific correlation between Gina Gershon's plunging neck line and the plunging credibility of this flick. As it gets lower & lower, as costume choices get tighter & tighter, as buttons come unbuttonier & unbuttonier--to the point where I was waiting for Gina to yell at the cameraman "Hey my eyes are up here!"--the plot turns into a serious case of WTF. The timeline gets compressed harder than Gina's cleavage, where one minute you'll have someone getting killed in a raging tsunami and, literally, the next scene is that person's funeral in the warm glow of sunlight, then back to panicked storm chasing, some random terrorists, a perfect marriage falling apart, politicians getting attacked by murderous frogs, and a totally bizarre plot element about a guy getting his arm stuck in a pipe 200ft up in the air while trying to fix the motherboard on his computer.

Did I miss anything? Probably. Because I was too damn distracted by Gina Gershon's neckline which is now down to her ankles.

Also I was distracted, to the point of epileptic seizures, by the hyper stylized, rapid fire, plain bizarre edits in the film which in 20 years will either be hailed as the greatest cinematic innovation since film noir, or just plain stupid.

But omg if you hadn't guessed, this movie is anything but boring. I mean, who doesn't want to see a trailer park get sucked into the sky as its residents scramble to rescue the plastic pink flamingoes from their doorsteps? Who doesn't want to see Tom Skerritt (Commander Dallas from the iconic scifi thriller "Alien") flying loop-de-loops in a $33 million SR-71 Blackbird... to save the world, you say? ...no, just to collect data which could've been more easily received by a weather satellite, except that weather satellites don't have the great Tom Skerritt flying loop-de-loops in them. Who doesn't want to see the great James Brolin (the dashing hero of "Capricorn One") doing the electric slide from the pulpit of a tv ministry? Who doesn't want to see, omg the best part, Randy Quaid playing the deathwish storm chaser from, I dunno Arkansas by the sound of his accent, basically a reprise of his hilarious role as the Winnebago guy in "Christmas Vacation"?

So there you have it, this movie has everything. Sort of like a pineapple anchovy m&m pizza has everything. I don't know whether to rate this flick a zero or a gobjillion.

Dialog such as this turns what CBS was hoping to be a grand spectacle of disaster into a comedy of disastrous proportions. This is filled with numerous technical errors that speaking as a weather hobbiest, can give non-informed people the wrong impression of the true power of nature. Take for example a TV weatherman reporting a "Category 5 Hurricane with gusts up to 150MPH". 150 MPH windspeed is considered to be Category 4 strength on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale and gusts of 150 MPH would indicate sustained winds of around 135 MPH. Category 5 winds start at 156 MPH (sustained) and go up from there. Hurricane Wilma, for example, had sustained winds of 175 MPH with gusts over 200. FYI, there is NO Category 6 or F6 classifications for storms for good reason. 5 is considered top of the scale, period. But CBS (or any of Big Media) won't let the facts get in the way of some good sensationalism. The rest of the story consists of standard disaster film clichés. I'll likely watch the conclusion, as this is like watching a train wreck... you just can't turn away. Rated 5 out of 10 for the unintentional laughs and for Randy Quaid (Cousin Eddie the "twister chaser") :-)

You know, I thought CATEGORY 7: THE END OF THE WORLD was some cheesy B-movie style TV miniseries that had been made by one of the obscure cable channels when it debuted in the USA and probably seen by half a dozen people. Then I find out it bagged the highest viewing figures when it was first shown and was also nominated for an Emmy award. Er, did I see something different to everybody else? This is laughably, atrociously bad, a production that looks like it cost all of a hundred bucks and was made by a bunch of arrogant film school students. It's no different to the endless disaster movies churned out by the likes of the SyFy Channel, all of them bland, nondescript and indistinguishable from each other.

CATEGORY 7 contains four episodes which show America assailed by super storms and various other natural disasters, including (randomly) an invasion of poisonous frogs. The scenes of actual disaster are limited, but they're undeniably hilarious, utilising appalling CGI to show the destruction of famous landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore. It's like a Lego version of a Roland Emmerich movie. And, inevitably, the title is a misnomer: only the eastern seaboard of America is threatened, although apparently according to the filmmakers that's the whole world (or at least the only bit that matters).

To sustain the running time, there are various sub-plots about TV evangelists, religious nuts, a terrorist group and some kidnapped kids. The dialogue is ear-gratingly routine and the performances are lacking; it's one of those productions where you sometimes feel embarrassed for the actors involved. Gina Gershon, almost unrecognisable after extensive plastic surgery, headlines, and there are minor parts for Robert Wagner, James Brolin, Tom Skerritt, and others besides. Probably the most amusing turn comes from Randy Quaid, reprising his "wacky" turn from INDEPENDENCE DAY as a storm chaser. Sadly, the only reason to watch this is as an unintentional comedy, by which virtue it's funnier than most genuine comedies in cinemas at the moment.