Supernova (2005)
(On DVD, May 2006) Immediate intervention is required! Deep inside this three-hour-long miniseries lies an acceptable catastrophe film, but it’s been smothered in insipid dialogue, drawn-out development and an entire serial-killer subplot that seems spliced from another film entirely. This script shows clear signs of metastasizing plot threads: See that Peter Fonda subplot? It wander on for two hours, well past its relevancy to the action. And that serial killer thing, oh my: Have we just wasted forty minutes on something this painfully predictable? Did we just squander forty expensive minutes on that stuff? What about those false-escape subplots that serve no narrative purpose except goosing the already-exasperated viewers? Did you fall asleep too during those bits? Well –you’re not alone. Whoah, we’re not done, though: Check out that “Australia” in which everyone sounds American, everything looks South African and where the death penalty was re-introduced without anyone looking! Gee, and what about those Hanna-Barbera cartoons? –oops, those are supposed to be top-notch CGI sequences. Oh well. Hey, don’t feel so sorry for the film: if you’re going to use a title as generic and derivative as Supernova, evoking memories of the awful 2001 film, you pretty much deserve everything you’re going to get. (Hey, isn’t that Tia Carrere? She’s a bit older than the last time we saw her, but isn’t she still as cute as ever?) I can understand that this made-for-TV thing isn’t meant to be a work of art, but the least it could do was avoid wasting everyone else’s time: While there’s good stuff in Supernova (When was the last time we saw St. Louis trashed by plasma bolts? What about seeing the Sahara desert transformed in peaks of molten glass?), it simply squanders away any chance at snappiness or energy through useless subplots and mountains or irrelevance. Re-cut that poor thing and call me whenever Tia Carrere gets most of the screen-time.