10.5 (2004)

Very disappointing...

Must See Movie...

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

... so I'm being more than generous for the cinematography, sound, and special effects (they do give out Oscars for these after all) and raising it to 3/10, and still I'm feeling very generous given it is neither Christmas nor my birthday. I thought this thing had been embarrassingly and quietly buried by the networks a decade ago, and there it was today on a cable channel! That I actually pay for! This thing is a camp classic that seems to aspire to be something in the vein of "Independence Day", except this film does not have Will Smith and manages to make that 1996 film look like Citizen Kane in comparison. A bunch of earthquakes strike up and down the west coast making Dr. Samantha Hill (Kim Delaney), "an intellectual earthquake expert" - do they actually give out such degrees and job titles? - believe that there is an even bigger earthquake coming. She manages to keep a straight face spouting lines like "These are not from our fault. They are from the faults affected by our fault." Hey this dialogue is somebody's fault! She predicts a "big one" will come and lop off a piece of the entire west coast UNLESS...they follow her cunning plan. Of course this involves nuclear warheads planted all along the west coast and therefore a massive migration away from the west coast for everybody. And we must have a tent hospital with lots of doctors out in the desert encampments being forced to make life and death decisions, acting like they have never had to do this before. Are these guys all podiatrists or something? But I digress.This thing drags on for four hours so we need lots of interpersonal relationships that need healing, including a father/daughter pair that I didn't recognize until today. Hey, that's Kaley Cuoco as the daughter when she was only 17, three years before "Big Bang Theory", here in a film in the tradition of Irwin Allen, who ironically believed in the theory that any film with a big enough bang is worthwhile entertainment! Oh, and then there is Jeff Bridges as the president, who proves he still has that common touch by playing basketball with Fred Ward's character, who although he is the FEMA director, actually gets his hands dirty in the disaster. Oh well, at least he wasn't at some horse show at the time. See Hurricane Katrina and FEMA director Michael Brown for reference.Well after four hours of sitting through this I will tell you that "the movie ends with a big explosion". It would have to, else there is really no payoff. I'm going to make you sit through the entire thing to learn anything more. If you must. Not recommended for anything but beer bong or drinking game enhanced laughter.

Almost every criticism that can be thrown at this mini series has already been made, so I will start with mine: * the stereotyped young, beautiful, brilliant, kick-ass woman who will not fall into line and insists on playing by her rules which run counter to all others. She is right and everyone else is wrong. She wears a tightly fitting shirt throughout the film and never changes it, so presumably everything happens in one day.* The squabbling families - father and son, father and daughter, husband and wife. All disaster movies have them so they can either be killed off or reconciled.* The rupture following the train down the tracks. That's the part where I suspended all belief and just sat back for the ride.* We are told that the fault is so deep underground that no instruments have been invented which could measure it. Later they have to set their nuclear war heads at 350 feet or thereabouts to fuse the fault. Gimme a break! I thought coal mines went lower than that. 3,500 feet would have sounded more likely. 3.5 miles even better.The good points: * I liked the split screen and the special effects.* It was fun for a few hours and made a change from talk shows, cooking shows and home the shopping channels.On a cold wet winter's night when you have nothing better to do, stoke up the fire, grab a few friends and sit back for the ride.

The idea of it all was great and with a massive earthquake dividing America in half it draws you to see the movie. But once you get into the movie it starts getting cheesy. They discover an never before seen major fault line running through North America 700 km below the surface. Now as everybody knows 700 km into the surface THERE Isn't ANY SURFACE, its all just a pile of molten rock cause of the heat, it couldn't ever get any pressure to build up under the tectonic plates. Its just impossible. And the worst setback is the zooming in, zooming out part of the camera's. One second ur looking at a high image of a disaster scene, the next you see feet trampling around and pieces flying around their ears but always able to dodge every piece of it. If i can give you one piece of advice, if this is EVER on TV again, just SWITCH THE CHANNEL! It'll put you asleep when you watch it.

10.5 (2004) BOMB (out of 4)An X-Games biker is riding around Seattle when a massive 7.2 earthquake hits bringing all the buildings down around him. This here gets the attention of the President of the United States (Beau Bridges) who turns this case over to a friend who works for FEMA (Fred Ward). On another part of the West Coast an earthquake expert (Kim Delaney) has a theory that more earthquakes are going to follow due to something dealing with the plates but she also believes a nuclear blast could bring the plates together and stop future quakes. Soon another quake hits Northern California and soon one hits San Francisco and it appears the next quake will his Los Angeles, which would mean no more bad movies from Hollywood. Actually, it means this quake is the big one and the West Coast is going to fall in the ocean. Whatever….While Earthquake was a bad movie that was made entertaining due to how bad it was, 10.5 on the other hand is just an incredibly bad film that doesn't have any redeeming factors. I'm a sucker for this disaster flicks but this one here grows tiresome before the opening credits are over and the bad thing is that we've still got over two and a half hours to go. Everything from the acting to the directing to the incredibly bad special effects are worthless making this an incredibly hard film to get through. In fact, by the time part two starts I'm sure most people watching would rather be experiencing a real 10.5. The key to every disaster film ever made are the characters who we are supposed to cheer and root on and hope they don't fall victim to Mother Nature but that's not the case here. In fact, I kept hoping most of our main cast would fall victim because that would mean we were closer to the finish. Throughout disaster film history we always get stereotypes that are usually so incredibly stupid that we laugh at them and we get the same type of thing here minus the laughs. We get the typical melodrama, which includes and father and son struggling after the mothers death, a father and daughter trying to come together and a husband and wife who are the verge of a divorce. Thankfully, even though fifty million people are evacuating the city they are all able to find one another to make up before the quake hits.The characters are so overwrought and obnoxious that you can't really cheer for them and the worst one has to be the beautiful daughter who hates her father but the quake brings them together. I'm not going to bother mentioning the actresses name but lets just say her acting ability is below the level of Tor Johnson of Ed Wood fame. Beau Bridges usually delivers a decent performance but it's clear he was just cashing a paycheck here. Seeing him as President of the United States is a joke in itself and he does nothing with the role making us believe he really is the leader of this country. Kim Delaney comes off very annoying and doesn't make a good lead actress. The film's one saving grace is Fred Ward who is interesting even if he's just sleeping. He also gets the film's only well made scene where he has a final talk with his son. I think people are attracted to disaster movies for the same reason they can't help avoid looking at a car wreck just in case they are able to see a body lying in the road. They watch these films because they want to see disaster and the hopes of a few people beating the odds of survival. The special effects in the film are all CGI and do they look incredibly awful and fake. I'm sorry but CGI is the evil creation of Satan and the lack of imagination really shows this here. And please, don't give me the fact that these scenes couldn't have been done without the CGI effects. Check out San Francisco or Earthquake and you'll see that effects were being done before CGI and they also contained a bit of imagination, which is very important. Just take a look at the scene where the Golden Gate Bridge collapses. Check out the scene where the earth is breaking apart and following a train. Tremors had better ground breaking scenes and it didn't take a computer to create them.With this disaster film we also get a post 9/11 speech that is so forced that you can't help but role your eyes. There are various political statements made throughout the film and they all come off fake and it's clear the director is just trying to make this film be something better than it actually is. This film shows the worst of America in the fact that no imagination went into it and the director seems to think that everyone watching would fall for the various tricks and stupidity that is put on the screen. How a film like this could turn out this bad is beyond me but 10.5 is without a doubt the worst disaster film ever made, which is saying a lot considering this genre gave us duds like The Swarm and When Time Ran Out.