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By Patrick Keller

July 9, 2004

TWISTED

There's no denying it: We're in the midst of a bad movie renaissance. Centuries from now, historians will study our time and say, with no small amount of awe, "These people lived to see the release of YOU GOT SERVED and GLITTER. RADIO! BOAT TRIP! SNOW DOGS! Vin Diesel before he was sainted! Children, they lived in legendary times!" Of course, these historians will be large and green, and have a bony exoskeleton. Also, they will communicate entirely by rubbing the coarse hairs on their legs together.

But we can discuss how to prepare for our inevitable domination by super-advanced insectoids later.

Yes, bad movies are everywhere these days, and they're flourishing. Kids practically have to be tied to the furniture to stop them from going to see their "Junior Freddie Prinzes" and their "The Rocks" in the latest THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS ripoff or AGENT CODY BANKS epic. Adults are just as guilty. Someone's going to see all those Costner movies, and I suspect a lot of AARP discounts are involved. Hell, Oprah has even started her own "bad movie club." Every year, the famed talk-show host seeks out that one film she believes to be the worst of the worst. Then she produces it and sometimes even stars in it.

Why is this happening? Where did everyone's taste go? Are they putting something in the Coke served at theaters that causes spontaneous temporary retardation?

For the answer, we need to turn back the mists of time, awkwardly mix a few metaphors, and look at TWISTER, the Michael Crichton/Jan de Bont behemoth, which may not be the worst film ever, but is quite likely the best-made bad movie ever, or the worst-made good one. It's hard to say. Either way, somehow, someone (probably Satan) convinced Steven Spielberg that it would be a good idea to make an action movie about the weather. Things went downhill from there.

Quite possibly the only film in existence starring an Oscar winner and a piece of plywood, TWISTER dares to dive head-first into the empty swimming pool that is extreme meteorology. Helen Hunt plays Jo, who, as a young girl, witnesses her father getting sucked up into a giant tornado, and suddenly develops an overwhelming obsession with chasing cyclones, perhaps in the hope that she might run across her dad, sitting dazed in a cornfield somewhere. As far as we can tell, this never happens; instead, Jo just races after a lot of storms, and then stares at them angrily. Which is all well and good, but it's a lousy way to pick a career. On the plus side, I guess, there would be more people studying heart disease and cancer, but no one really wants their physician to get all distant and wistful during a prostate exam.

Naturally, Jo's obsession with glaring furiously at twisters wreaks havoc on her career, her friendships, and especially her romantic life, notably her marriage to a block of maple, here portrayed by Bill Pullman, or possibly Paxton. One or the other wants a divorce from Jo so he can marry Melissa, whose parents were presumably murdered by a flighty psychologist. But Jo is too busy to sign the papers (there are storms to be scowled at), so Paxman tracks her down in a field somewhere, where she and her wacky band of loveable misfit storm trackers are busy pointing at monitors and discussing suck zones. Maybe they were talking about tornadoes, I don't know. Anyway, among misfit storm-trackers, ol' Pullton is a Storm-Tracking Legend, owing to his "tornado sense," which, presumably, he gained after being bitten by a radioactive climatologist.

But whatsisname has turned his back on his gift and sold out, becoming a TV weatherman, which, in the storm-chasing community, is on par with selling nuclear secrets to the Chinese AND setting fire to puppies. AT THE SAME TIME. Jo even takes a break from scowling at wind to scowl at Bill some. She's interrupted when a storm forms, and Jo is off to stare at it, with Pinocchio and his fiancée in tow. They chase after the tornado as fast as they can, then, when they've found it, they turn around and drive away from it as fast as possible. I'm a little fuzzy on the science here. Perhaps they're not studying tornadoes so much as performing stress tests for General Motors. Regardless, they follow this pattern for the rest of the movie: Hear about a storm, chase after it, then run away from it.

FUN TWISTER FACTS: 1. Tornadoes can lift up cows, giant signs, even fuel tankers, but they're no match for a good, strong grip. 2. There is, apparently, such thing as an evil meteorolgist. 3. People get into heated fist-fights over weather equipment. 4. Philip Seymour Hoffman used to be really desperate for money. 5. Tornadoes are bastards that hate your relatives. SUGGESTED FEATURES FOR THE SPECIAL EDITION DVD: 1. The Two Bills: A Helpful Guide to Telling Paxton Apart from Pullman 2. We're Not Totally Evil, Honest: Weathermen and Giant, Faceless Corporations Respond 3. Jan de Bont's Valiant Struggle with Severe Brain Damage 4. Pullman Paxton's Secret: All I Needed to Know About Acting I Learned From My Elm Tree.

Jo finally reaches her breaking point when one of the storms roughs up her kindly aunt. Now it's personal. (Again.) So she and the 2x4 scurry off to face the King of the Tornadoes, and Jo scowls extra hard at it. The twister proves no match for her staring technique, and dies. She and her plywood go off to make lots of splinters. The end.

But if you were to ask anyone — anyone — who has seen TWISTER absolutely anything about it, I guarantee you they will bring up the cow. Yes, the most memorable part (and, indeed, the only memorable part) is the sight of a badly rendered CGI cow flying past Jo's truck. Perhaps as a psychological defense mechanism against the pain inflicted by the movie, the only part of the film that people seem capable of remembering is an airborne heifer. It would have been far more efficient, not to mention artistically significant to have made a five-minute short film about the flying cow. Just think of it: Fade in to a dark sky, ominous music. A truck driving furiously on a country road. A cow flies across the screen. Helen Hunt scowls at it. Credits roll. Genius.

And yet, no such luck. Instead we're forced to endure two hours of tornadoes and not a single Munchkin. But, I can hear you saying, TWISTER wasn't so bad. It was a mindless popcorn movie. Harmless fun. That's just it! It's evil, don't you get it? Evil doesn't show up looking like BATTLEFIELD: EARTH... it's subtle. It sneaks in the back door wearing a nice tie, and it's only when you look close that you discover it put roofies in the punch and shaved the cat.

You see, it's not so much that TWISTER is the worst movie ever made, but rather the fact that so many people seem to believe that it's a Good Movie. It's not, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why the vast majority of people who saw it seem think it is, even when they can barely remember what it's about or what happened in it. There's a mystery here, and I intend to solve it. Why, I ask, is America addicted to bad? Is there something in these movies? Are they putting something in them that makes them so damned irresistible? And, if so, can we sue them for it? Cos I wants me some of that fat Hollywood money.

I'm gonna need it if I intend to live it up like I plan to before the insectoid overlords arrive.

Next Week: All the (Jack) Chicks dig DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.

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