Meteor | | Cast : | Sean Connery, Natalie Wood | | Director : | Ronald Neame | | Studio : | Mgm/Ua Studios | | Format : | Color, Widescreen | | Released Date : | October 19, 1979 | | DVD Released Date : | August 14, 2001 | | Language : | French (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 26, 2005 | | Summary | Hokey, probably; Entertaining? Sure | Content
 | Russians and Yankees team up to save the world in "Meteor", one of the last gasps in the celebrity-disaster movies of the 1970s'. (Like the "Airport" movies - you'd have a bunch of celebs tossed around for no other purpose than to have their headshots printed along a strip at the bottom of the movie poster.)
In "Meteor", a huge chunk of an asteroid, blasted out of its benign orbit after by a wayward comet, is now heading towards earth. Called "Orpheus", the chunk is 5 miles wide and promises to kick off a nuclear winter on arrival. The only hope left are two space-based missile platforms lofted into orbit by NASA and the Soviet Union - each pointed at targets on Earth rather than into space. (I don't remember if the platforms, named for Hercules and "Peter the Great" actually violated any treaties, but their owners sure seemed keen on keeping them secret.) The Americans learn of the incoming asteroid first, having fatally positioned one of their spacecraft in the asteroid belt at the moment of the comet's collision. They then learn that Hercules is "light" -they'll need extra missiles, and since they don't have any time to put new ones into space (and as Henry Fonda's president puts it memorably, they can't just "conjure some out of thin air") they'll have to go to the Russians for help. Waiting for Orpheus to hit, the plot boils down to scenes of the scientists realigning their missile platforms away from Earth, and other scenes showing the devastation wrought by smaller "splinters". (In an interesting move, there aren't any subtitles for the international targets.)
Even if you find the special effects lame, the score annoying and the plot thin and holed as if it too was struck by a meteor, "Meteor" surprisingly gets some good mileage from its stars. Sean Connery is great in a post-Bond role as the civilian designer of Hercules - a NASA fixture who resigned when his program was taken over by the military ("Hercules" was apparently designed just for this eventuality). Brian Keith is also great as Dubov, Connery's Russian counterpart. The script has most of the Yankees getting along with the Russians, so he's never a foil for Connery, but he gets some good scenes going from a genial to an enraged Soviet, improbably speaking all his lines in Russian. Karl Malden also rises above what seems like an incredibly unnecessary role as a NASA bureaucrat - he's neither scientist, engineer or politician, but he keeps Connery's maverick in line. Landau, a great actor, plays the thankless role of the cold-war hawk of a general who fears the Russians more than shooting stars. The FX are actually pretty good for pre-CGI (mostly excelling in the space sequences). The music seems repetitive, but Laurence Rosenthal's score is also evocative of the Russians and the oncoming Asteroid. Much of the movie drags on and many sequences seem redundant. (Did they need all of the "splinter" scenes? The "Avalanche" sequence is most ludicrous - the world is coming to an end, but there's no hint on any of the faces of those out skiing the alps in that sequence.) That said, the plusses and minuses of this flick make it memorable, and the plusses make it worth watching. The script places the control center for Hercules underneath the old AT&T bulding in TriBeCa, and I admit I can't pass the place without thinking of this movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 13, 2005 | | Summary | Waste of Talent and a Waste of Time | Content
| In American cinema history this is perhaps the worst waste of talent ever to hit the screen.The cast is overwhelmingly robust. However, the story, screenplay, direction,casting and effects are truely laughable. This is a huge film that doesnt even make a whimper. I encourage people to see it as a tribute to how bad a film can be made despite a wonderfully talented cast. I just sat and watched with my mouth open in shock. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 24, 2005 | | Summary | Classic 70's Sci-Fi Kitsch | Content
| There's something about sci-fi movies from the 60's and 70's that I love -- they have a certain kitsch quality to them. Films like "Logan's Run" and "Westworld", and, of course, "Meteor". It's not a great film, but it does have that 70's sci-fi film quality that makes it an entertaining film. It's the kind of film they would remake nowadays with an expensive budget, CGI graphics...and a lousy script, and the original would be better.
In a nutshell, a big meteor (the title character!) is on a collision course with Earth, and Sean Connery has to work with "Russian" Brian Keith (of "The Parent Trap", "Family Affair", and "Hardcastle & McCormick") to stop it. Chaos ensues.
Recommended for those looking for a fun film they won't take too seriously. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 23, 2005 | | Summary | An All-Star Cast, A Real Stinkaroo Screenplay-What a BLAST!! | Content
| What is the only Wood that doesn't float? Why Natile, of course. You think that joke is bad, just listen to the screenplay, the cheezy fake Russian accents (Oh, Brian Keith). Like "Grease 2," you can't help but watch this train wreck. It is soooo bad it's actually entertaining. It's actually better than "Armageddon" and much less ridiculous than "Deep Impact."
There is peril, romance, thrills, chills, and laughter abound. Just accept this one as pure popcorn fun and enjoy. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 07, 2005 | | Summary | Imperfect, But I've Seen Far Worse | Content
| METEOR was one of those films that appeared at the tail-end of the 1970s disaster film cycle, and thus it was grounded by a great deal of critical drubbing. Truth be told, its special effects weren't exactly the greatest of its time (in fact, in an act worthy of Roger Corman, some of the disaster footage was taken from other films like AVALANCHE and TIDAL WAVE); and after DEEP IMPACT and its CGI images, they probably appear even less spectacular now. However, far louder and far worse special effects-dominated films have been made at costs of six to ten times what METEOR cost to make in 1979.
The film concerns a five mile-long wide meteor named Orpheus which is blasted out of its position in the asteroid belt by a comet (the collision destroys a manned space probe sent to observe it). Orpheus turns out to be on a direct collision course with Earth; and with its being big enough to survive a fiery entry through Earth's atmosphere, there is the strong potential of the human race becoming extinct within less than a week. The plan being advocated by two scientists (Sean Connery, Karl Malden) is for a coordinated volley of nuclear missiles by both the US and the Soviet Union. But on the American side, there's a spanner in the works in the form of a virulent anti-communist general (Martin Landau), and Connery's Soviet counterpart (Brian Keith) is reluctant to admit that his country even has the capacity for such a plan.
With time running out, and with the approval of the President (Henry Fonda, reliable as ever), the nuclear missile strike is put into effect. But even as this is taking place, splinter meteorites ahead of Orpheus enter Earth's atmosphere: the first hits in Siberia; the second kills thousands in a Swiss ski resort when an avalanche occurs; a third creates a massive tsunami that wipes out Hong Kong; and the fourth nails Manhattan, where the main communications complex for the missile strike is. Everybody down in that bunker, including Keith's interpreter (Natalie Wood), must make it out of a mud and water-choked subway corridor and hope that the missile strike succeeds.
The premise of METEOR is a good, if not unique one, and it has plausibility. The flaws in the Stanley Mann/Edmund H. North script are a typical Cold War paranoia mentality; and Landau, normally quite a good actor, gives an unstable performance here that can best be described as overblown. But when the film focuses in on the deep-space threat, and when one doesn't notice where the effects fall a bit flat, then METEOR manages to pull itself up. Connery, Malden, and Wood do good work with what they have, as does Fonda in the same kind of role he had in Sidney Lumet's 1964 classic FAIL SAFE. Joseph Campanella and Trevor Howard also do well in support.
The direction by Ronald Neame (THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE) is fairly good, given the flawed script, and the special effects (at least those that clearly are not stock footage) by Glen Robinson, who won an Oscar in 1974 for EARTHQUAKE, are admittedly spectacular. Certainly no one will mistake METEOR for a science fiction masterpiece, but in recent years we've seen a lot of films that cost upwards of $100 million and have lavish special effects fall even flatter than this one. METEOR is an imperfect movie, to be sure, but one can do worse...a LOT worse. |
|
