Terrible Movie Reviews: Twister

Twister is the kind of movie that I will always watch when it's on TV, because it's Twister and my brain has plenty of neurons to spare.

Twister tries to act like it's a movie about tornadoes, but that is nonsense. Twister is so much bigger than that. It is a beautifully-crafted tribute to TRUE LOVE and the STRUGGLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL. It's like the Bible, told allegorically through a movie about destructive funnel clouds. Let's take a look:

Twister stars Helen Hunt as a crazy storm-chaser who tries to fill the hole her father's death left in her soul with scientific learning about the thing that killed him: a big ol' fat F5 tornado. 

Fact: This is why 95% of storm chasers choose that field.

She and her lovable band of loser storm-chasers have invented some kind of machine called Dorothy that, if they can place it exactly in the path of a tornado, will enable them to learn enough about tornadoes to predict them more accurately in the future and give better tornado warnings -- the kind of thing that might have saved her father (except it totally wouldn't have, because the movie opens with her father's death scene and we can all see that they have plenty of time to get to their tornado shelter; it just turned out the shelter was a piece of crap and the door flew off, taking her father with it. So maybe she should be studying how to not build shitty tornado shelters where the doors can just fly off and suck people out like a giant vacuum).

Enter Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt's estranged husband. He shows up with his new beau, needing Helen Hunt to sign their divorce papers so he can go off and marry the other chick. Helen is busily signing here and initialing there when --ALL OF A SUDDEN-- a TORNADO appears nearby!

Bill Paxton, who used to chase storms with this crew, is like a recovering alcoholic reunited with his old drinking buddies. He forgets all about the divorce papers and his fiancee and takes off with everyone else to go chase down the storm, trying to put their stupid Dorothy machine right in front of it. This activity seems to be approximately as dangerous as hand-feeding a grizzly bear, but these guys aren't afraid because SCIENCE.

Naturally, they fail the first time around, because they have four Dorothys so if the first one worked, the movie would be over in like twenty minutes. Some might consider that an improvement, but not me. You'd miss out on so many magic movie moments if it ended in the first twenty minutes.

WE GOT COWS, Y'ALL.

After the first Dorothy fails, we meet THE BAD GUYS of the movie (because a movie about tornadoes obviously needs a villain. Tornadoes can't be the villains because NATURE IS NATURAL and therefore CANNOT BE EVIL). You can tell the bad guys are bad because their hair is slicked back, their equipment is nicer, and they drive a scary fleet of all-black vehicles like some kind of presidential motorcade OF DOOM.

Also, Darth Vader's theme music plays whenever they drive around.

What makes the bad guys bad, you ask? Do they want tornadoes to kill more people? Are they trying to genetically engineer a more deadly tornado?

This is what I would do if I were a tornado supervillain.

Of course not, silly! The bad guys are bad because they are CORPORATE SELL-OUTS.

Ummm ... okay wait. Let's dissect that a little bit:

The bad guys have nicer equipment and a fleet of black vehicles because they "sold out" and got corporate sponsorship for their storm-chasing activities. What ... the f**k? Does f**king Pepsi sponsor them or something? What the hell kind of corporation would pour money into some crazy tornado-chasers, and how exactly would this investment pay off for them? 

The movie presupposes that pretty much anyone can "sell out" at any time, and the only reason any human being on Earth has not accepted endless funds from corporate sponsors is because they're too morally sound. Oh how I wish this were the case.

Anyone? No? Nobody wants to sponsor me?

Anyway, the bad guys are very, very bad, and they try to steal all the ideas and equipment from the good guys, including their own fancy version of Dorothy. They are seen showing this invention to a local news crew, who of course are very interested because who wouldn't want to watch a special news report on some scientists who invented some boring machine for measuring tornado wind speeds or whatever.

The rest of the movie is just one ridiculous scenario after another. Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton find themselves within ten feet of a tornado like five times in two days, which of course causes them to fall back in love with each other. They eventually succeed in launching Dorothy into a tornado -- an F5 tornado that they survive by tying themselves to some pipes. The bad guys all get killed by various tornadoes, because they're bad guys and that's just how it goes.

And then at the very end, after Dorothy collected all the data the storm-chasers were looking for, Red Bull showed up and was all "hey, can we sponsor you?" and they were all "F**K YOU, RED BULL. WE DON'T WANT YOUR TAINTED CORPORATE MONEY AND YOUR GREED." So Red Bull was like, "fine, suit yourself. We will get some guy to jump out of a space capsule instead," and that's exactly what they did.