Category 6: Day of Destruction

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.

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.

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!

CATEGORY 6 can readily be summed up by pointing out that it was shot in Canada, although it is set in Chicago. An aging Brian Dennehy leads a huge cast in this badly made disaster flick as huge storms head for Chicago and a hacker brings Chi-town to its knees, power-wise. Dennehy is OK even though he is clearly just collecting a paycheck. Thomas Gibson of "Criminal Minds" mumbles his way through as the TV movie's secondary lead. And Randy Quaid plays a colorful tornado chaser who is a near-duplicate of his character in "Independence Day." The film is talky and tedious, and the effects are on a high school level. There's even stock footage that doesn't match particularly well with the locale (palm trees, anyone?) I managed to sit through most of this before finally giving up.

Average film. Very routine formula film about a disaster.

There a few things going for it, and a few things against it.

Against it are the settings. Too many city shots, with buildings, motor vehicles, people in suits and ties, all that which makes for dull spectacle. There are some very trite situations, the young lady not taken seriously by a trite bespectacled wimp, the fascination with computers, the power plays that bore most people, the predictable outcome of the storm chasing moron.

For it, while the characters at first begin to sink into stereotypes, each one is brought out with at least one saving grace. Not sure if this saves the film, but it does show some semblance of style and intent to keep it from being too silly. We aren't left with too many predictable and trite results, and it still has entertainment value.