Max Q: Emergency Landing (1998)

Sadly Over-hyped

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Though advertised as a 'film' (i.e. theater movie) in the TV guide, IMDb confirmed the obvious signs of a TV movie. Things I thought were cheap: the use of the solo e.guitar to emphasize heroism (this effect is so cheap that refer to it as 'the p*rn guitar') and a man's choir to emphasize determination, or something. The wobbly camera in the a-drift (but stable) spaceship. I don't mean the shots done by the astronaut, those looked believable by its light-weight camera jerkyness. Things that needed a little imagination: The blowtorch, not only to imagine where the oxygen came from, but also how a soldering device can cut through metal (and give off sparks doing so). And why astronauts shift their weight from one leg to the other, moving around in a shuttle in orbit. Things that could have been worse: The animation of the tolling spacecraft, and how the crew experienced and handled it. The dialog - a lot of it sounded quite natural. There's no obligatory heat or animosity in discussions, no improbable loads of wit. Some cheesy stuff like the grinning bum in the end, or the surprise of the motorists on the improvised runway. Good for a chuckle though. Containing a lot of standard ingredients, but also showing skill (camera, lighting... no artwork however). Errors (out of laziness, time pressure?) and fair accuracy.

Obviously the writers of this mulch had this brief - "Imagine Apollo 13 but on the shuttle with a sexy imperiled crew trying to get back to earth". If this sounds stupid, that is because it is.Throw in some dreadful special effects, a low budget, a total disregard for reality & physics and a plot which consists of one over the top crisis after the next and a happy ending. The actors however do make the best of a bad situation, but this one is a total dud.

Stay away from this movie! It is terrible in every way. Bad acting, a thin recycled plot and the worst ending in film history. Seldom do I watch a movie that makes my adrenaline pump from irritation, in fact the only other movie that immediately springs to mind is another "people in an aircraft in trouble" movie (Airspeed). Please, please don't watch this one as it is utterly and totally pathetic from beginning to end. Helge Iversen

What was I thinking when I rented this one? What did the distributor think when he copied the tape and shipped it all the way to Holland? That anyone really wanted to see this s***?!?It's about some astronauts getting into trouble outer space (Apollo 13 flashback, but never even in the shadow of this fine film) and they want to return to home. If you act in such a film, you should be glad that you're gonna drift away from earth as far as possible!This one wants to surf on the small wave of space movies in 1998 (Deep Impact and Armageddon), and this one fails everywhere. Deep Impact and Armageddon weren't perfect either (far from it), but they were at least worth watching once (and maybe one more time when we're all old). They gave some fun. Max Q doesn't. It gives irritation. Okay, okay. It's a TV movie, but does that mean you're allowed to come up with such a mess?If you haven't choked in your own vomit by the end (by all the cheap drama and worthless dialogue) you've must have bored yourself to death with this waste of time.It gets at its worst at the end when the space shuttle lands on... No, I can't 'spoil' this one (IMDb guidelines forbid it). So you have to see for yourself. NO! DON'T SEE IT (sorry), but rent a movie which is worth renting (like Battlefield Earth... just kidding!)Probably the worst one I have ever seen.