A Travolta flick. Usually good, right? Well for this one, let’s start with the end in mind. Hey did you ever take that Stephen Covey course back in the day when it was all the rage at work? The seven habits of highly effective people? What a crock of shit that was! Jiminy Christmas, those courses blew. Our company got suckered into that nonsense for years. I bet that guy made a fortune – pretty good gig, huh? How does one become a self-help/business effectiveness guru anyway? Just come up with some horseshit platitudes and assemble them into a group of steps to sucker in the human resources folks who organize this crap? In any event, number two is “begin with the end in mind”. So here it is – the best part of this movie was when Travolta’s character bursts into flames and sailed into the sky like he was tied to an anti-aircraft missile. Now, I have taken a few college-level physics courses in my life, but somehow I must have missed the class where they taught that electricity has significant mass and if hit by a jolt of high voltage, it is the equivalent of getting slammed by a Mack truck travelling 300 mph. Seriously?? I actually burst out laughing at this scene and cheered his demise. If for no other reason, the absolutely God-awful southern accent he did. Turrible! Oh, and his character in the movie was called “Beau”. More like “BOOOO!”
This film suffered the fate of many others with characters that don’t seem to be the right age for the part. After her parents both die on the same day, Kate Bosworth (as Bailey) lived with uncle Boo. Her boyfriend was Devon Sawa. Now both of these character were supposed to be the same age but Sawa (who looks a lot like Daniel Craig), looked 10 years older. And Bailey talked about getting into college so at first you though she just graduated from high school? What in the hail?? It was very confusing. And then there’s an ex-boyfriend harassing Bailey who looked similar to Sawa. Why do they do this??
Second reason to cheer Travolta’s Human Torch “flame on!” send off – he called one of his guys “Poke Chop”. Come on, man! And it sounds as bad as it reads. And that leads to a third reason, Poke Chop (played by Gil Bellows, he’s actually pretty good in this), had the worst fake beard ever. Boo had a bad one as well, but Poke’s was the worst. In fact, in one scene where it’s raining, that thing repelled water like it was completely made of silicone, which it probably was. And probably bought at a Halloween costume store for 5 bucks!
Another part that blew was the dramatic countdown to the day of the storm. Which really was a letdown because the storm was no big deal. What really happened was a few power line poles got knocked over onto train tracks, and then of course a train came by, derailed and knocked out the entire grid. Pffftt!
But for all the reasons this movie sucked, at the end, I felt bad about laughing through the ridiculous scenes, terrible acting and awful plot. They actually showed real linemen who had died on their jobs, which of course was very tragic, and even plugged a charity that helps their families. I will link it here as it is well worth looking into and supporting. Bottom line, this movie blew, but at least check out the charity. Two Travolta dance steps out of ten.