Category 6: Day of Destruction

I'm a bit of a disaster movie junkie. I just can't miss a film, no matter how bad it looks to be, as long as it promises some kind of cinematic carnage. I've sat through 'Night of the Twisters,' survived 'Atomic Twister,' and laughed all the way through '10.5' But 'Category 6: Day of Destruction' hits new lows. The computer graphics were so poor as to be embarrassing even for what you'd expect from a 'made for television' piece of crap. But it was the onslaught of every cliché in the book that really got to me, from the adulterous husband, the weather man who feels guilt over a past failure, the evil corporate guy, and to top it all off they gives us the pregnant lady in an elevator schtick…I'm mean PLEASE!

With all that said I'me already set to record part two. It's possible that I need help, or maybe an intervention.

Sort of like a train wreck, I had to watch this and part seven. Very goofy, but had some interesting yet predictable plot lines.

The whole message of this series (at least the two parts I watched) seemed to be that we humans are bad, bad creatures. According to what I gleaned from these two parts: We and we alone caused global warming, should recycle more, should stop driving and should stop using so much energy. And of course, all energy companies are evil.

A very preachy series! Oy!

Some of the plots were predicable. Like Chandra West and Thomas Gibson in their obvious extra-marital affair, crisis with family, resolve issues during weather disaster.

Randy Quaid was a hoot as he more or less did a reprise of his "Independence Day" role as a whacked-out misfit.

A lot of the special effects were repeated in both 6 & 7 (like a skyline view of Chicago then a skyline of Washington, D.C., with the same carnage in the foreground - or a repeat shot of a power plant, one in Chicago, one in D.C.).

I had to suspend disbelief as the time-line of many of these events and scenes defied logic.

Overall – poorly written storyline with average acting and quirky special effects.

Okay, so I enjoy a romp through destruction now and then - I'll admit it, I'm a disaster movie fan. That is, when the movie is ABOUT a disaster, NOT when the movie itself IS a disaster - BIG DIFFERENCE! My husband and I almost turned this off after the first hour of the first night, but decided to stick it out to see some potentially cool special effects. Okay, we got those. And then we felt compelled to watch the conclusion on Wednesday. Sloooooooooow. Boooooooooring. Not to mention stupid! I was pretty willing to overlook the paper-thin characters, lame dialogue, and clichéd, disjointed plotting. I was even mildly willing to overlook the damage done to the anti-global-warming cause. But in a movie where obviously somebody had enough computer smarts to give a realistic facsimile of the St. Louis Arch twisting and shouting, why wasn't there an equally savvy computer geek on hand to EDIT OUT THE PALM TREES from the stock footage dubbed in as "hurricane hits Chicago?" HELLO ALL YOU ON THE WEST COAST - last time I checked, Chicago was still located in the Midwest (you know, that "fly-over" country that produces most of YOUR food???), and guess what? There are no palm trees in the Midwest. SURPRISE!

Fist of all don't listen to the negative critics here this movie was made for TV and was the highest rated Mini-Series in 2 years for CBS (because it was good)Part 1 had 19.4 million viewers, Part 2 17 million. If you've seen some of these wackadoo Sci-Fi Channel movies this is not one of them. Area51 FX used a combination of actual stock footage blended with cgi and LightWave3D Modeling to create the FX with a budget close to $15 million. Keep in mind of just over a thousand reviews on IMDb 12.5% give this movie a 10 over on Amazon of 34 reviews it scores a 3.5 out of five. Not to shabby some people just like to pick fun movies apart as if this was meant to be Shakespearean its not its meant to be what it is a DISASTER MOVIE. Some movies with larger budgets have their flows to like 2012 which had a monster budget and awesome FX had a single family plot line while all heck breaks loose around the world same for DAY AFTER TOMORROW. This excellent TV-movie gives us several characters, some better than others and while I liked the other movies mentioned so much so that I bought them on Blu-Ray I just ordered the sequel CATEGORY 7 on Blu-Ray after watching this one on Sci-Fi channel over the weekend. Great fun, Very Good Special FX, some funny and interesting characters, likable acting and actors for me these days with some lame movies on TV this was a cut above 8 out of 10 stars for keeping me seated the full 3 hours.

They covered everything... Badly. From special effects to facts. I kept watching because it was so bad. There's something to be said for bad, but not enough to make me want to watch part 2. I probably will though, just to see if it is as bad. Everybody was over the top. Actors that I usually like count on for good performances were terrible in this. Had any of the writers ever actually observe a real relationship between real people? I had a little trouble understanding how people in a city that was totally blacked out were able to watch news updates. Big business is bad. Government is good. The only people you can count on for honesty is the media. Throw everything you can think of at a camera and you've got yourself a movie. I think that must have been the philosophy behind this one.