‘I gotta go Julia, we got cows...’
I remember Twister coming out in the summer of 1996 because it was the same summer that I saw Independence Day in theatres and declared it the best film ever made (it should be noted that I was nine years old at the time and had only seen about ten movies). My devotion to Roland Emmerich’s film bizarrely led to me viewing Twister as a direct rival to Independence Day and so I refused to watch it out of a misguided sense of loyalty. Looking back on it nearly thirty years later… I was right. Independence Day is way better than Twister…
The paper-thin plot sees Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) and his soon-to-be-ex-wife Jo (Helen Hunt) being forced to work together to create some kind of advanced weather system that serves as a warning for any upcoming tornados. That’s pretty much it. Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Alan Ruck are also there but all three of them are underused. It’s almost impressive that this ends up as an entirely humourless film despite having a cast stacked with comedic talent.
While I love Paxton and Hunt (and they do make for a compelling couple here), neither of them has the charisma or the star power to carry an action movie of this magnitude. Paxton works better in a supporting role and Hunt is wasted in a film that is all action set pieces and very little character development. Having said that, madcap director Jan de Bont (Speed) does at least ensure that Twister looks beautiful (aside from some dated CGI) but aesthetics don’t change the fact that much of this film is… dull.
Twister is not as silly or bombastic as other disaster films of its era, and so it never really works as a nostalgia watch even – disappointingly lacklustre.
