Terminal Error

There's a massive amount of criticism with this movie . The CGI is terrible ? Yes it is especially the opening scene in the Ukraine . The plot is stupid ? yes it is . Very stupid . It's full of scientific nonsense ? Indeed it is . You'll fall out of seat how ludicrous everything plays out . However none of this would mattered if the film had realised its potential

The problem with the potential is there's a lot of scope for cruel things to happen . Certainly an idea of a super intelligent self aware virus is a good premise which could have ended up as a cross between PULSE and TERMINATOR 2:JUDGEMENT DAY . Unfortunately we once again endure TVM style kitchen sink dramas when we should have been watching lots of people suffering a grisly fate like the occupants of a lift , so the potential is sadly wasted

Marina Sirtis should fire her agent for getting her in this. Her talent is thoroughly wasted here.

Machines-gone-berserk story that builds upon a goofy premise. This time, a computer virus is downloaded into a sensitive program, in a manner beyond the sublimely ridiculous. The perpetrator of this nasty scheme is a psychotic guy who giggles like a baboon and sweats from his forehead a lot. He's an irate employee who got fired, and his unwitting accomplice is the teen-angst-ridden crybaby son of the guy that did the firing.

Once downloaded, the virus blows up things in Russia, takes over appliances, shoots rockets at cars, plays with traffic signals, talks too much, and does a pitiful impression of Hal 9000 from "2001."

The kid, the dad, the psycho, and Hal 9000 Jr., all get on your nerves pretty early on. There is one character, apparently based on Stephen Hawking, who had the potential to be interesting, but the film does not give him much screen time, nor does it develop the character enough. Marina (as teen-angst's mother) really tries, but she is given very little to do, other than scream or run in terror.

If you turn your brain off for 90 minutes, and just want a good laugh, the film is OK for that. However, if you're looking for a plausible story, this one is just a terminal error.

We're supposed to believe a computer goofball gives a 'virus' to a kid in a song which gets on the kid's dad's computer and infects multiple city facilities...killing people and blowing up phone booths. Yeah, and the virus is a 'smart virus' which makes judgement calls. No thrills, no monsters to watch (unless you count Timothy Busfield (goofball); or Michael Nouri looking very old, and not even remotely giving a performance. Marina Sirtis is very ill-used here. I hope she smacked the screen writer and the director after she saw this drivel.

As Terminal Error unraveled, I couldn't help compare it to 2001: A Space Odyssey (IMDb score 8.3), Colossus: The Forbin Project (IMDb score 7.1), and many others that successfully broach the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Also couldn't help but marvel at how badly Terminal mangled the concept despite having three decades during which the most rudimentary knowledge of internet and computers became common.

For example, given that the highest voltage in computer gear (aside from 120Vac going into the power supply) is usually 12Vdc, exploding rack panels and monitors are ridiculous. There would be no source of the voltage needed to produce the fireworks. The keyboard layouts look like something the props department cooked up, when they could have easily gone to a computer store for real computer keyboards and bought a scrap of believability. By 2000, the idea of one large computer controlling every item in a home or business (let alone, most of a city) had gone out the window. If a door lock needed to be intelligent, it probably had its own microprocessor. Cruise missiles launching vertically from silos on US soil is rubbish. Add cheesy special effects, and a variety of voices the virus employs. There's ample other evidence that those responsible for this movie had been living under a rock, technologically speaking.

We also get an OD of the bratty son who makes us understand why some species eat their young. Michael Nouri's character is totally one-dimensional, while Marina Sirtis just seems she never shed the aura of Counselor Troy from Star Trek TNG.

We ultimately must conclude that, for Terminal Error, "AI" has to mean "Artificial Idiocy." Something this bad doesn't happen naturally.

Irredeemably amateurish as this is, it is more entertaining than many big-name flicks...maybe on account of its very trashiness.

Nouri, something less than an A-list actor even in his prime, plays Brad Weston, head of the crappiest looking software company you ever saw. After Busfield (employee reject of the year) throws a spaz and uses Weston's son to download a smart virus into the company computer (in a song no less)which manages among other things to blow a Ukraine nuclear facility to the hereafter - this has to be the WORST special effect ever foisted on to the viewing public at large - things just get dopier.

One must pay homage admittedly to the plastic plane sequences, not to mention the hand-drawn silo launching fx. Salaries aside (assuming anyone was PAID for this) the film obviously had a budget of less than $500....refreshments included! Defying plausibility from the word go, the conceptual brilliance of wiping out an entrenched super-virus, capable of speech and thought incidentally, with a hand-held "Game-Boy" is nothing short of awesome in its originality.

A classic of low-rent sci-fi.