Deep Impact (1998) - Leder offers one of the worst disaster pics of all time

[ZERO]

 

+ Worst Movie of the Year

+ Most Undeserved Hit of the Year

 

Things are looking grim for old mother Earth on this animated poster for Mimi Leder's Deep Impact

A gigantic comet is heading towards Earth with disastrous force. - Can it be stopped? 

Deep Impact is written by Michael Tolkin (The Player (1997, TV movie)) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Jacob's Ladder (1990)) and directed by Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker (1997)).

The film actually focuses on several other things than the overwhelming problem with the comet: A teenage romance, a relationship to a father that needs mending before the impending apocalypse, - and then there's the insufferably unaffected gravitas-enshrouded US president played by Morgan Freeman (Nurse Betty (2000)). The comet and a lame mission to alter the outcome enter the plot on occasion in this thoroughly horrendous film, which is mysteriously hideous to sit through.

James Horner's (The Life Before Her Eyes (2007)) score is splashed on as if it was an all-mending lacquer, while sentimentality pulsates from every scene, and everything rings so entirely false that it almost makes the thinking audience-member sick.

Leder's film is the upmost in grade zero trash; it makes its immediate competition Armageddon (1998) look like Doctor Zhivago (1965). Deep Impact's impact is rage.

 

Related post:

 

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

 

 

Watch a 3-minute excerpt from the film here

 

Cost: 80 mil. $

Box office: 349.4 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.36 times its cost)

[Deep Impact premiered 7 May (Mexico) and runs 121 minutes. Development began in the late 1970s. The film meshes attempts to remake When Worlds Collide (1951) and Arthur C. Clarke's novel The Hammer of God (1993). Steven Spielberg had meant to direct the film but had to bow out due to making Amistad (1997), - and because the production was racing to not be left on the platform behind the year's other major comet-hitting-Earth disaster action adventure Armageddon. Shooting took place from June - October 1997 in Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, California, including Los Angeles, and in New York. The film opened #1 to a 41.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 5 weekends in the top 5 (#1-#2-#2-#3-#5) and grossed 140.4 mil. $ (40.2 % of the total gross). Armageddon was released later in 1998: It cost more and grossed more, but astronomers concluded that Deep Impact was more scientifically accurate. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, translating to 3 notches over this one. Leder returned with Sentimental Journey (1999, short) and theatrically with Pay It Forward (2000). Freeman returned in Under Suspicion (2000); Téa Leoni (Bad Boys (1995)) in The Naked Truth (1998, TV-series) and theatrically in Life in the Fast Lane (1998); Robert Duvall (The Outer Limits (1964, TV-series)) in A Civil Action (1998). Deep Impact is rotten at 45 % with a 5.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Deep Impact?