As a kid, I loved Twister because I grew up in Tornado Alley, a portion of the mid-western United States that a lot of fucking tornados happen in. If you really didn’t know that, you’re either dumb or not from America and then it’s cool because why would you know that! Twister captured that with some, at the time, revolutionary special effects. It also had some revolutionary stupid shit.

The movie opens with a giant jerk F-5 tornado attacking childhood Helen Hunt’s family in June of 1969.

Somehow, the cheerful tone of that song probably didn’t echo for Jo Harding. Her dad was murdered by a sentient tornado. See, there are tornados and then there are tornaDICKs. This movie has lots of tornadicks.

The tornado sucks Helen Hunts dad out of the door, because he wouldn’t get away from holding it closed which didn’t help any. Here is a photo of the tornado

For a movie with decent effects, we see a satellite that is totally phony orbiting. Everyone is gearing up to chase after tornados. Dusty, played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, says Jo is “Oh by dopllah.” They’re gearing up to try to deploy a piece of shit called Dorothy. It’s a giant barrel with sensors in it and fancy junk on it. The goal is to throw it in a tornado. When they pull the sensors out, they make a sound effect! LOL. So Bill gets pulled into chasing tornados and like an idiot, he brought his new fiance along to get old divorce papers signed.

I think Gary Busey’s kid makes a cameo behind the douche that steals Bill Paxton’s idea for the shitty Dorothy. It isn’t really that creative. Larry Zbyszko and Douche will drive into the tornado later. We like when villains die in America.

So the tornado, powerful enough to lift a truck and 5 feet from Hunt and Paxton, doesn’t suck them up, kill them, hit them with debris, deafen them or anything. Really it just gets them messy. Doesn’t phase them psychologically either, which I can’t tell you a person I have met who could go outside for a month after something such as this.

This doesn’t stop them and they continue on, using Bill’s truck that, surprisingly, has liability only! They go to Aunt Meg’s in one of the scenes that has always, no matter what, made me hungry in a movie. I am a sucker for steak and eggs and that always gets my gut rumbling. Unfortunately, I also end up angry enough to strangle small things when the discussion about the Fujita scale begins. They build up to F4, knowing F5 is next, but when Bill’s curly headed fiance asks, they all go silent…the reason? An F5 killed Jo Harding’s father and basically left her insane.

So with Melissa in the truck, Jo and Bill get trapped between TWO tornados on a bridge, while a third one is a foot or two away! They don’t end up knocked into the water. Just spun around in place. Also, no one thought to just hit the switch to open Dorthy? This would have been the perfect time. They’re dumb.

We chase another tornado. This one is on top of a hill. Jo and Bill go alone but somehow, their CB radio is on even though no one is pressing the switch. And Melissa is able to hear them perfectly even though they’re outside, in a storm, and the CB is inside of a truck. Jo and Bill pretty much profess their love for each other here.

They go to the movie theater and its (finally) night. The Shining with Jack Nicholson is showing. Melissa ponders her recently overheard conversation, just as a tornaDICK shows up and makes it personal, attacking the movie theater (from behind the screen during a scary part). It throws a car that seems to defy gravity based on the speed it is moving. The dork gets a frisbied hub cap to his head. I liked that. Someone should cut that together with Marty McFly throwing a pie plate at the 1885 Hill Valley Festival. Since the tornaDICK didn’t get anyone, it goes after Aunt Meg and her great food and stupid dog and junk yard. I would have her ass taking down that noisy shit if I lived in her neighborhood. Melissa breaks up with Bill right as he has to go save Meg and the dumb ass dog. The house falls apart just as everyone gets out.

So it’s personal now. And it is suddenly day time. Literally, no morning or dawn but it just jumps to like fucking noon. An F5 has manifested itself and declared itself to be the king. It may be the same F5 that killed Jo’s dad. Jo and Bill, like usual, tell everyone to hang back. They drive through a house. They drive through fields. They include as much as they can in this to push that Dodge Fucking RAM down our throats. It was nice at the time but man Dodge’s SUCK. They are the worst trucks and I’ve owned all types from the three American automakers and driven most others. Dodge is ranked below Fred Flintstone’s car. Why do you think Fiat had to buy them out? Because they were the best?

Jo and Bill drive the Dodge RAM into the tornado with Dorothy FINALLY on and hey, they hug and win! Because they get all that data. But then they aggro the tornado. It gets MAD and chases them. They run in the most INEFFICIENT path possible – unless you think the tornado was specifically chasing them and I think it may have been. They run inside of a sharp object barn and have to leave it. Then they run to a little watering shack and Bill decides that with some convenient leather straps, he can strap them onto this pipe (that he knows is super deep into the ground, who would know that) and they can survive the tornado. It goes DIRECTLY OVER THEM, and they see inside of it. It’s sucking them so much, they’re upside down together and angelic music plays. Couple of things here. Number 1 – the debris on the outside of this thing would have killed them. The shack and wood hitting them would have killed them. I don’t know how they could have breathed in such a vacuum either so they’d have died from that and finally, you think it can lift houses, tractors and entire counties up into the air and yet, it won’t break a shitty leather belt OR just rip their legs and arms off? Bullshit man. They’re fucking DEAD after that one.

So anyway they live and all the losers drive up to congratulate them. Hoffman is killing it as Dusty and I think his performance really helped to make his career. That worked out well. Anyway, the movie blows and is totally unrealistic but if you want to go to sleep to something, this is it.

3/10.