Remember, if you will, back to a time much earlier in your life when you were eagerly awaiting your birthday, Christmas, or some other special day. You didn't know exactly what was coming, but you suspected it was something special and grand. However, not only did you likely hate the nearly unbearable waiting for the "event" to arrive, but you probably also got tired of listening to the incessant adult talk about that big day. And when it finally did arrive, the thrill was still there, but the results were occasionally a let down.
Well, that's how you'll feel watching "Deep Impact," the film Earth-is-in-peril flick from 1998 (the other being Disney's "Armageddon"). The latter turned out to be the bigger hit with more action, a point that means this picture will severely test your patience as you wait until very near the end before anything "special" occurs.
While such an event has been portrayed in past movies, such as 1979's "Meteor" (with another all- star cast including Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, and Henry Fonda as the President) and last year's TV mini-series, "Asteroid" (with a less than all-star cast), news stories about asteroids potentially striking Earth have always been bandied around, thus raising the interest in such matters.
Although the previews imply that there's plenty of disaster action (cool looking tidal waves, crashing and burning comets, etc...), you should be aware that you're going to have to wait a long time before you see any of that. Instead, and just like all of those Irwin Allen (and other) disaster films of the 1970's, this movie features a disparate cast and their personal stories that are affected by the looming disaster. While the plot holds true to the disaster movie standard where the separate stories barely connect -- if at all -- it deviates from the norm by holding off the disaster until the end.
The movie's all buildup, and when the final -- and costly -- special effects finally arrive we're thankful, but only because we know the movie has to be nearly over. The effects are nicely done, and obviously were the focus of all of the filmmakers' collective attention. Since the rest of the movie is so boring, however, you'll probably begin rooting for the big and dirty chunks of ice to hurry up and get to work. Alas, they don't and we're subjected to nearly two hours of uneventful tantalization.
The problem is actually multifaceted. Since there are so many characters in too many different story lines, our attention must constantly switch back and forth among the stories, thus defeating any momentum that might have been building in any given one. In addition, since there's no main character to root for, we never get deeply involved in any of the stories.
More significant, however, is that the entire buildup leading to the eventual impact is rather boring. Sure, there's a fun segment where the astronauts plant nukes on the comet, but director Mimi Leder ("The Peacemaker," TV's "ER") otherwise delivers leaden scenes that are presumably supposed to make us care for these people and what's to become of them (like "Titanic" where we know what's going to happen).
Instead, these scenes offer little or no emotional or even visceral impact on us, and thus we have no vested interest in the characters or their stories. Part of that lies with the fact that for the world shortly coming to an end, everyone seems rather calm. Not denial calm, or belief that the astronauts will succeed calm, but unbelievable movie calm. Knowing their fate so far in advance could have generated some interesting behavior amongst the doomed inhabitants, but instead we just get to see the usual last minute, get out of town panic so commonly found in such movies.
Beyond the obvious advantage of making the people more believable and sympathetic, Leder should have also used a computer animated visual aide (as was done in "Titanic" to show us how the ship sank) that at least would have demonstrated what would happen when the comet hit the Earth. With just one Presidential (and only verbal) description of how the world will end, the impact isn't that strong. One never gets the feeling that the world is indeed doomed as happened, in say, "Independence Day."
Beyond their up close interaction with the comet, even the astronaut scenes are dull and listless, especially considering the heroic, potentially lifesaving nature of their mission. In short, the scenes here are nothing more than typical Hollywood drivel where the astronauts are flat characters who can only be differentiated by their appearances and thus don't draw us into their mission.
Not even the great Robert Duvall ("The Apostle," "Tender Mercies") can do much with his character and thus can't save those scenes or the movie in general. In fact, most of the cast is wasted in their shallowly constructed characters that come courtesy of screenwriters Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin (the latter whose talents in films such as "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder" are nowhere to be found in this flick). Duvall gets to play the old veteran on the mission (can you say John Glenn?) who must prove himself to the young whippersnappers accompanying him, but nothing much ever comes of that and he isn't given much else with which to work.
The same holds true for three-time Oscar nominee Morgan Freeman ("Driving Miss Daisy," "The Shawshank Redemption") who not surprisingly brings a qualified dignity to his role as the President. Unfortunately, he isn't given much to do other than make many TV appearances and we never get close to knowing the man behind the Oval Office. Elijah Wood ("The Ice Storm," "Flipper") gets to run around with his usual wide-eyed and mystified expression, while Oscar winners Vanessa Redgrave ("Julia") and Maximilian Schell ("Judgement At Nuremberg") are completely wasted in their roles in a completely unnecessary subplot.
Of course, the movie's more concerned with special effects than characters, and when finally called upon, delivers in a mighty fashion. If you've ever wondered what a several hundred foot high tidal wave looks like while slamming into several well-known architectural landmarks, make sure you wake up near the end to see the glorious details.
Not surprisingly, once the effects arrive everything else becomes quite preposterously stupid. Such moments include NASA officials still at work with only a few hours left in their lives, Leo not only finding his teenage bride in a massive, miles long traffic jam, but then running with her up a mountain faster than a ski lift and, of course, the approaching tidal wave, and finally Jenny making it from Washington to somewhere on the Atlantic coast in what has to be a world speed record.
That's standard fare for your typical big budget summer action flick and is forgivable if the movie's outrageously entertaining enough to viscerally stun you into not caring. Unfortunately, this film isn't. While we understand what the filmmakers were striving for, we never end up caring for the story's characters. Thus, the proceedings become quite tedious, and after waiting nearly two hours for the short-lived special effects payoff, you may begin to secretly hope that the tidal wave got those responsible for this boring flick.
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