MIMI LEDER
Bil’s rating (out of 5): BB.5.
USA, 1998. Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Zanuck/Brown Productions, Manhattan Project. Screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, Michael Tolkin.Cinematography by Dietrich Lohmann. Produced by David Brown, Richard D. Zanuck. Music by James Horner. Production Design by Leslie Dilley. Costume Design by Ruth Myers. Film Editing by Paul Cichocki, David Rosenbloom.
The insults to human intelligence that hurl themselves your way one after the other in this loser action film are way deadlier than the meteor that threatens to destroy the planet. A cast of varied ages and pedigrees (Vanessa Redgrave, Elijah Wood, to name but two) never makes a cohesive whole thanks to a shabbily written script and halfhearted direction by Mimi Leder. When it is confirmed by scientists that a meteor has been seen in the skies that threatens the survival of Earth, the President (Morgan Freeman) issues a statement that a small group of the country’s population has been selected to go to underground protected caves and await their survival of the disaster. Téa Leoni plays the presidential aide who doesn’t do much besides go between her bickering, divorced parents (Redgrave, Maximilian Schell) and Wood plays the teenager who marries Leelee Sobieski (at the ripe old age of 14) so that she can survive with him once he’s been chosen for cave duty.
