Movie Review: "Twister" (1996)

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Movie: "Twister"
Director: Jan de Bont
Year: 1996
Rating: PG
Running Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes

Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) is currently working as a weatherman and looking forward to marrying his fiancee Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz). There is just one problem: his would be ex-wife Jo (Helen Hunt) has not signed the divorce papers. When Bill and Melissa head out to meet Jo in the field where she works as a storm chaser to pick up the divorce papers, she springs a surprise on him. That surprise is Dorothy, a weather instrument of Bill's design developed to give readings from inside a tornado's funnel. Bill agrees to rejoin the storm chasing team temporarily, just long enough to chase down a twister and hopefully get Dorothy into the air.

This is another movie I can recite almost word for word. I'm not sure why I love it so much, maybe it's because when I was a kid, I wanted to be a meteorologist or a storm chaser. That has obviously changed, yet this remains one of my favorite movies of all time.

The CGI is actually pretty awesome for a movie from 1996. The cinematography is also really good. As a whole, this movie manages to showcase a lot of cool destruction and the special effects still hold up well today. They were so good, in fact, that they were Oscar nominated! Though very unrealistic and most likely wholly inaccurate at times, this movie still manages to be extremely entertaining. The dialogue is downright cheesy at times, but that's all part of its charm. It also has quite a cast, featuring Academy Award winners Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman (who we both think has the best role in the film as spazoid Dusty), god amongst men and Golden Globe nominee Bill Paxton, Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Robin Hood #825, the lady vampire from "The Lost Boys," that one guy from "Lost," the other guy from "Police Academy," Edward Norton's boss in "Fight Club," the #1 Oneder's fan from "That Thing You Do!," and apparently Anthony Rapp!!!

The premise might be simple and all in all, it's basically a glorified love story under the guise of thrill-seeking tornado chasers, but it's still fun to pull out from time to time. There's nothing wrong with movies that exist simply to be fun. That's really all this movie is. Sure, you're not going to get anything extraordinary by watching it, there are no big life lessons to be had, it's simply a way to thrill and enthrall audiences with flying cows and people being impaled.

My Rating: 10/10
BigJ's Rating: 7.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 58%
Do we recommend this movie: ABSOLUTELY YES!!!
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One year ago, we were watching: "We're The Millers"