Twisters Flattens Itself
Film review
These days at the cinema, if it’s not apocrypha from decades-old superhero sagas, then it is likely derivative remake, sequel, or revival. The most latter of the latter is the case with Twisters, a poorly constructed revival of a franchise that tries too hard to be the perfect summer disaster blockbuster film of all time.
Superlative is fitting because the false enthusiasm that each actor in this all-too-earnest film forcefully infuses into their performances is exhausting, however effectively it distracts from the distractible script.
Throughout, it feels as if the actors are trying to impress their NYC acting school coaches, not even trying to land an audition, just preening for praise. The lead female, Daisy Edgar-Jones, is so self-consciously being in a movie that whatever coyness she’s attempting is just dull and uninspired. This inhibition or immaturity of skill inhibits the better skills of most of her co-stars. Hers is a Julia Roberts-inspired character, though Helen Hunt played in the original 90’s version; but the actress seems intent on doing-the-thing more than evoking a character, no matter how one-dimensional. The beauty of many well-made 90’s blockbuster comedies (which is what this film basically tries to be) is they were grounded enough in the competencies required for producing a coherent whole that even the potentially trite was made charming. It’s like she’s pretending to act which makes the potentially trite but charming demonstrably awkward. Most of the secondary and tertiary performers are quite good. And the one female who mans the drone should have been the lead, in my opinion. These actors are either underused or given wayward instruction to incessantly scream their lines.
The lead male, Glen Powell, is a caricature of a Tom Cruise figure on high-octane Red Bull. He never relaxes into the comic machismo of the role. Although he is not untalented and buzzes with sexual charm, in this film, it rings false, unlike his performance in Top Gun: Maverick where he saves the day in an impressive tertiary role to which he applies an even, maturing masculinity. But not here. It’s all cowboy cardboard cutout, and it’s a disappointment. He’s got the flare, but the director seems to have insisted all the actors mean every word of their lines. It’s not melodramatic but adolescent.
The script tries to convince us of unproven meteorological concepts to take down a tornado in such a frantic and undisciplined manner that the emotional kitsch used to cover whatever weaknesses there are in the science turns suspending disbelief into a technical irony that takes the viewer out of the narrative.
The whole thing is silly.
The female lead’s trauma from the opening scene is never given the depth it would require for it to add any weight and emotional impact to the tone of the film. And everyone is trying to steal the show. No one character supports another with the kind of submission to the narrative whole that supporting roles demand, the sole exception being veteran actress, Maura Tierney, who knows her place in the script and steals the scenes she’s in. There’s more chemistry between her and Powell’s character in just thirty seconds of film time than he ever has with his intended counterpart.
The only sophisticated product of this film is the CGI used for the storms which are dramatized without losing their realism but to little effect as they are never properly personified, never threatening nor scary enough, not even when they are sucking human lives into their vortices. This seems to me to be the most post-modern flaw in this chaotic narrative weave: real components of natural phenomena forced into histrionic, nonsensical context to shallow, self-destructive effect.
And forget about the hobbled romance at the center: the antagonism between the male and female leads has no precedent. She hates the cowboy just because he’s a cowboy but prejudice is not enough for sparks to fly. There needed to be some kind of a catalyst for this tension, an episode between them that provoked her scorn, but it’s simply his existence that does it. He’s too personable and attractive for that to be believable.
The one other actor who shows real quality of engagement is David Corenswet (studios really have stopped changing actor’s names for marquee quality easiness). He is the underused antagonist in the film’s human thread of the script, but he’s never given enough back-story or scenes which clearly demonstrate his intentions or ulterior drives. He’s just demanding and wants to win, but what that is, the film never cares to reveal exactly. The better view of the storm? More detailed data? For what? For whom? Why? Corenswet has real presence and the best acting chops of the lot, but the script fails to develop him to its detriment.
There are a couple of good jump-scares and a couple of hardy chuckles, but mostly I laughed at the film itself. Much like the heroine’s goal of engineering an implosion inside the tornado, the film collapses into itself from the weight of its competing energies: uneven, trite, and overdone.