An entertainment spy sneaks into Michael Crichton’s room and steals his script for Twister. His bosses make a few cosmetic changes, paste a new name on it, and rush it into production so it can beat Twister‘s release date. Wait, that’s not the plot of Tornado!. That’s a reasonable supposition on how it was made. OK, the plot. Hot grant auditor Samantha Callen (Shannon Sturges) arrives in Texas to pull the funding of Dr. Joe Branson’s (Ernie Hudson) tornado measuring device. Tornado chaser Jake Thorne (Bruce Campbell) needs to show her how valuable the project is while tossing in a little romance. Of course there’s a bad guy weather man because…well, because there was one in Twister.
There was a time when Bruce Campbell could do no wrong: Evil Dead II—1987, Moontrap—1989, Army of Darkness—1992, The Hudsucker Proxy—1994. Even when the material left something to be desired (Waxwork II: Lost in Time—1992), Campbell was quirky and entertaining. By ’96, that time was coming to an end. Now, with Man with the Screaming Brain and Alien Apocalypse under his belt, the Campbell name doesn’t mean much, and it doesn’t in Tornado!.
Campbell plays his normal he-man, but without the eccentricities. That makes him a pleasant, but unremarkable leading man, and puts the weight of the film on the plot and on the special effects. Neither can support it. The story meanders about with lots of talk on the dangers of tornadoes (I’m from the Midwest; I’m well acquainted with what they can do) and just a little talk about the fancy new invention which is supposed to be so important. That’s just as well as it’s hard to get excited about planting detection equipment in the wind.
Since this is a disaster movie, the payoff has to be some kick-ass destruction, but that requires money, and there isn’t enough. We get a lot of rain, and some nice gales, but no money shots. No buildings tumbling over or cows flying in the air. The scenes are exciting enough for a drama or character study, but not for a movie named Tornado!
The ending is painful: false sincerity with characters behaving ludicrously. If you must watch this (perhaps you have an office contest to see who can watch the most disaster films), turn it off ten minutes before the credits roll. You’ll be happier.