I often joke in reviews about how often movies have a barfing scene. In this, we get a character talking about barfing in the first five minutes (you will get to see some barfing about 30 minutes later). Hollywood likes using the same types of scenes and tropes in films. They also like to capitalize on a name brand, so instead of calling this “storm chasers” (which is what it’s about), they added an “S” to the horrible Helen Hunt movie “Twister.”
Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones from “Where the Crawdads Sing”) is an aspiring meteorologist, who with some other young folks, are storm chasers (or as they call themselves, “tornado tamers”).They’re working on ways to decrease the damage caused by tornadoes. They win science fairs and get grants along the way. Yet a big tornado blows away those plans. We skip to five years later with Carter now working for the National Weather Service in New York, far from her Oklahoma roots. And just as how it was stupid when Ryan Gosling’s character wouldn’t talk to anyone after his accident in “The Fall Guy” – she no longer talks to her old friends or her mom (played by the always wonderful Maura Tierney; see her underrated movie “Diggers” from 2006).
One of her old friends, Javier Rivera (Anthony Ramos, who was so good in “In the Heights”) wants her to get back in the game, because his company Storm Par, has new technology that can film tornadoes in 3-D and blah blah blah (we get a lot of boring expository dialogue).
When she agrees to spend a week doing it, we find out there are lots of storm chasers, and apparently one guy, Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) is so famous, he has millions of YouTube followers and can sell autographed pictures and T-shirts. They also cut each other off as they furiously drive to the tornadoes, as if they’re in a Mad Max movie.
Every character in this movie is annoying, and…part of me was wishing the twisters would win.
Powell, who was in “Top Gun: Maverick”, should have told them how bizarre it was that this movie took a scene out of the original Top Gun. That’s when Kate is a bit too nervous to do the job and place the device near the tornado. Uh…didn’t her partner tell her “I can’t do this without you.”
Makes me wonder…why that was. Surely there are other storm chasers that can analyze a tornado and not be as scared as she was (and who can blame her after that opening scene).
Also, one of my complaints with “Top Gun: Maverick,” was how it mimicked the original. The same thing happens here with some scenes.
The back-stories here were dumb. The songs were horrible and too on-the-nose (although I never mind hearing “Ghost Riders in the Sky”).
It’s a shame, because I like the cast. Katy M. O’Brian, who was great in “Love Lies Bleeding” isn’t given a lot to do here. And Sasha Lane, who I hated in “American Honey” but loved in “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” – is just a bit over-the-top (as were most of these goofy storm chasers).
This movie won’t blow anyone away. It’s two hours of CGI and corny dialogue. What it needed were more flying cows.
1 star out of 5.