Review of Deep Impact (1998) by Timothy S — 17 Sep 2013

"Deep Impact", the first of the summer's dueling apocalyptic popcorn movies, has a lot more intelligence going for it than "Armageddon," and it's pretty entertaining as well. The screenplay takes a much more realistic and practical approach to this "what if" situation, but it manages to come up with a plot device to satisfy both types of people who will see this film.

By splitting the comet into two pieces, one small and the other enormous, it can avoid the bleak and tragic outcome of killing off almost all of the world's population but still appease the people who came to see stuff get blown up Michael Bay-style. The end of the world moments are impressive, but thankfully kept to a minimum here.

The story comes first, and the best moments here are the scenes of human drama leading up to that inevitable calamity. Writers Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Ruben obviously put a lot of thought into this scenario and came up with some solutions that even by the standards of a fantasy such as this seem downright plausible such as the caves in Missouri and the National Lottery to pick the survivors. Those are some great touches, but there are also some campy moments such as the heavy-handed goodbyes from the doomed astronauts to their families. And watching Elijah Wood outrun this 100 foot wave on a scooter when it was supposed to reach eight hundred miles inland almost derails the entire picture single-handedly.

Until then, "Deep Impact" is a surprisingly solid and thoughtful doomsday picture. And it's entertaining as well.