Absolute Zero (2006)

(On DVD, May 2006) Some say that you can learn as much from the bad than from the good, and in this case you can probably try to get a full credit in dramatic arts from watching Absolute Zero. Incompetently structured, badly written, this straight-to-DVD film (by way of TV broadcast, we’re told) can’t even be bothered to do a good job in ripping off The Day After Tomorrow. While the CGI shots aren’t too bad, the writing shows a rare streak of tone-deaf dialogue, unimaginative developments and lack of scientific literary. Suffice to say that in this doomsday scenario, global warming polar inversion mumbo-jumbo freeze up the tropics while heating up the poles. (If you can figure how that’s possible without four-dimensional topology, email me.) But that’s a minor sin compared to the way the script can’t be bothered to introduce most of its character until after the thirty-minutes mark (in a film barely 96 minutes!) or where dialogue is seen as an afterthought. (“Science is always right”; uh, no, and every real scientist will tell you so.) It eventually degenerates in a low-budget “suspense” last-act that seems to slow down even as various countdowns are supposed to make us care. Yawn. This is almost worth a look thanks to its truly awful science… but just listening to an eight-year-old explaining his vision of the world can be just as entertaining.