Twister [VHS] [1996]

Director Jan de Bont was making his second film after the smash hit "Speed," so basically he needed some action. But the script by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin decides to overload the script with melodramatic elements. Helen Hunt plays Dr. JoAnne "Jo" Thorton-Harding, who has been chasing tornadoes ever since the night one of them took her daddy away. Her scientific purpose is to study them so that meterologists can make more accurate predictions and warn people in time to save lives, but obviously she has deep psychological demons driving her as well. This is one of the reasons that her husband, William Harding (Bill Paxton) is trying to get her to sign divorce papers. He is hoping to build a new life with Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jamie Gertz), but being able to study tornadoes in peace without Jo going crazy would be nice too. But if Helen Hunt wants to see what the inside of a tornado looks like, then that is what she should get to do. Besides, even Melissa knows that Jo and Bill still love each other.

If this was not enough to give a whole new dimension to what is already an exciting proposition (these people want to chase tornadoes; what more do you need to get excited about in a movie?), the script sets up the "good" tornado chasers, including Philip Seymour Hoffman as Dustin Davis and Alan Ruck as Robert "Rabbit" Nurick, and the "bad" tornado chasers, led by Dr. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes), who is more interested in corporate sponsorship and television specials than in the holy grail of pure scientific research. The "bad" guys even drive black vehicles in precision formations, while the "good" guys drive vehicles that each have to have at least 100,000 miles on them.

Consequently we have personal and professional circumstances that drive these people to put themselves in the path of oncoming hurricanes, which is, ultimately, the whole point of the movie. "Twister" is not about a single hurricane, but several, all apparently different, with the biggest and baddest of them all, the Level 5 "Finger of God," coming at the end. You have to be impressed that not only our hero and heroine survive these tornadoes, but that the script manages to make it reasonable that their lives are imperiled repeatedly in this film. That is what makes this a fun film, because even if the plot is on the level of a theme park ride, the special effects come fast and furious. Just think Tornadoes 5 (three levels of meaning there, people), Plot 3, and "Twister" grades out at a 4.

Final Note: At some point in the past the ratings board decided that saying a movie was PG-13 was not enough information for warning parents. The PG-13 rating for "Twister" is "for intense depiction of very bad weather." I leave you to ponder what a film would have to show in terms of bad weather to warrant an R rating (or higher).