Lightning: Fire from the Sky

This film would be perfect. Even without commentary, it's so stupidly hillarious it's worth watching. Clearly directed by some kind of partially trained monkey and edited by his cousin. While it starts a bit slow, it quickly kicks in with various scenes of lightning mischief. Who ever know lighting could go so slow!? Highly recommended!

I like lightning and storms but this movie bombed in every way. This should probably be rated a 1 but I give it a 2 for effort. Lots of explosions and things burning but soooooo many errors and just stupidity on the characters. Could of been worse but barely. You have three things in this movie, Hysterics, Monotone Emotions and things blowing up that wouldn't happen in reality not to mention the stupidity.

This has a lot of people just standing and or waiting for the something to happen. Lots of inaction or just stupid actions. You have two storms that are converging on a town while the areas around it are getting hit as well yet nobody does anything but a teen that's obsessed with storms and even that is much of nothing but sending a warning by setting of the towns storm sirens when it's too late.

You would of expected this from a movie from the 50's or 60's but for 2001, this bombed in every way. The special effects were lights and explosions when things would melt rather than explode and if this amount of electricity kept hitting the power grid, the relay stations would've blown. This is a 100 year storm that supposedly has the potential to last forever if something isn't done to stop it. That something, blowing up a fuel depot in the hopes of heat breaking the storm.

Not sure who they were trying to reach but this, besides watching things go boom, was grueling to watch. You even had some great actors that had potential but nope, even they bombed. You have the screamers and the rest were so monotone it was boring to watch. Save yourself the time and just watch something, anything else.

Lightning: Fire from the Sky is the first of two Lightning themed movies that will have inevitably have been making the rounds on the Scyfy channel.

It stars Dukes Of Hazard/Smallville alumni John Schneider, industry veteran Stacy Keach and hollywood star Jesse Eisenberg.

It tells the story of a young man with a fascination for lightning (How convenient) who begins to see evidence that a 100yr storm is on its way to his town. But who can he convince and what can he do to combat it?

It's all your usual cliched all the way to hell, predictible, naff looking and all by the numbers stuff but to be fair I've seen a lot worse.

What makes this rise above mediocrity is the cast, those three and the supporting faces do a decent enough job that manages to mask some the movies obvious flaws.

Generic stuff, but passable in its own way.

The Good:

Cast do a good job

Some really good writing in places

The Bad:

Cliched to hell

Ending is really dumb

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Eisenberg truly did find greatness, from small beginnings

The "Little Wesley" character from Star Trek is renamed and played by a new actor in LIGHTNING: FIRE FROM THE SKY -- a 2001 made-for-TV movie.

Here, Little Wesley has superior knowledge about weather patterns and dangerous thunder clouds. LIGHTNING burdens our boy genius with an assortment of ignorant adults who will forever fail to grasp the fact that Wesley is always right.

The lead victims of LIGHTNING are veteran actors John Schneider and Stacy Keach who both deserve better treatment.

With camera point-of-view and editing, the director attempted to give the thunder clouds a "personality" (for lack of a better word). It is a stretch and ended up being a distraction to the viewer.

This made-for-TV movie has little going for it and is best avoided.

Prime Video offers "Lightning: Fire from the Sky" (2001) which has all the flavor of a family-centered Hallmark movie. If you like this style of film, this one's for you.

The storyline connects two magnetic storm colliding over Rutland, a cozy small town near St. Louis. A 16-year-old would-be meteorologist seems to be the only person who can chart these storms, so, acting on his own, he sets off the town sirens as lightning ravages just about everything from telephone poles to toasters.

It's a bit corny, a bit funny, a bit nuclear family, but I looked past these issues and found it worth the time. I give it 3/5 Stars.