Meteor

Rating:

Look! Up In The Sky!

Main Cast: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith

Director: Ronald Neame

This little sci-fi piece of coal slammed down on Earth with a whimper and died a well-deserved death. If this had taken place about 65 million years ago we’d all be dinosaurs and the producers of this thing would be in the stomach of a big lizard.

Yeah, this is pretty bad. The story? A meteor is heading for Earth and the American government has to do something about it. Fortunately they have a super-secret missile defense system floating around up there, and the Russians (the old USSR) have the same thing. The problem is, the two governments don’t trust one another and won’t easily point the missiles in the direction of the tumbling rock. It’s up to Connery, a scientist pulled out of retirement, to liaison between the hothead American general and the sly Soviet representatives.

It sounds good, but marred by a slow plot, irrelevant cuts away from the main action, cheap sets and obvious special effects. I usually don’t mention these, as I’m usually more concerned about the story than with props and scenes, but in this case the plot is thin soup indeed and I can taste the bitter herbs and seasonings.

But do they manage detente and get the drop on the big rock? Will a few shards come down and do random destruction to a few choice places? And will the main characters have to dodge debris and a raging river in order to escape? If you know anything about these types of movies the answer is obvious. Otherwise I’d leave it for you to discover the answer.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. 1 star.