| Made for TV movies make me laugh. A lot. Now I'm not bagging Aussie made for the teev flicks, because let's face it, they are most likely the only option left for our flagging industry (proven by the fact that the majority of my lecturers open the class with "You guys are the ones that are going to solve the problem as to why Aussies won't watch their own films...blah blah blah"). What I am taking about is something far most sinister. The American made for TV movie. If you're unemployed, a stay-at-home child-rarer, drug addict, or university student studying the arts, then at some stage in your existence you have encountered one of these 'films'. Aside from the obvious physical giveaways of this 'genre' (which I won't go into because I don't feel like it, so there), the American made for TV movie (or AMFTM for those of us who enjoy acronyms) is foundationally poorer in pre/post production due to lower budgets, etc. In other words, they are shit. They are also often remakes of 'blockbusters', as they take an 'original' premise or concept and mess around with it until someone hopefully will either a) love it because it reminds them of some movie that they can't really remember that well because they were too busy txting on their mobile or making out with their significant other to bother catching the third act or b) love it because it is so bad that they can play 'armchair director' over at IMDb's message boards (I love people who use obscure film quotes in their posts and rant and rave when people guess incorrectly at the source). If you are a night-owl like me, then I'd turn on my teev now, because lo and behold, an AMFTM in on right now! I really don't enjoy disaster flicks and I have no idea why. Maybe it's because they are almost always set in the US, whose inhabitants are pretty much the sole survivors and heroes (who would expect that in an American film???) of the ordeal...or maybe it's because they are 99.9% CGI and whatever fraction of a percentage left is some baby-faced teen trying to bone the female lead before the tidal wave/storm/nuclear holocaust/monster creates a 'distraction'. No, no, I really can't put my finger on it. On the screen before me is Tornado! (and the bastards over at Australian TV Guide omitted the exclamation mark in their database), an AMFTM, which "was nice", according to someone with the handle 'Streetwolf' (who also unfortunately thinks that Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were great in The Fast and the Furious). According to IMDb, Tornado!'s synopsis is as follows:
Jake is a storm chaser whose friend Dr. Branson has developed a machine that can help detect tornados and provide earlier warnings. Sam Callen is an auditor who has come to evaluate the project and decide whether more research should be conducted or not. Jake must try and make the machine work and also convince Sam not to shut down the research. They must also dodge tornados in the meantime. Sound familiar? Look out for that flying cow, it sounds like Twister! (without an exclamation mark): TV weatherman Bill Harding is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife, Jo, to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend Melissa. But Mother Nature, in the form of a series of intense storms sweeping across Oklahoma, has other plans. Soon the three have joined the team of storm chasers as they attempt to insert a revolutionary measuring device into the very heart of several extremely violent tornados. If you have seen Twister, then you must remember Helen Hunt's (or Jo's) really craptacular 'revolutionary measuring device', which only worked after several hundred shredded Coke cans came into the picture. Well, Tornado!'s 'revolutionary measuring device' is equally, if not more craptacular than Helen Hunt's. This one looks like an oversized orange R2-D2 acquired from Crazy Clarks and they actually get to go inside the tornado! OMG WTF BBQ! They also use an old guy as an anchor instead of Coke can propellers, but hey, it's all in good fun! And with dialogue like this, who won't forgive such a diminutive technicality?: Jake Thorne: Hey, are we flirting here? Sam Callen: If we are, we're rusty as hell. Jake Thorne: Nothing a little oil won't fix. (It's a bonus that Ernie Hudson is in Tornado! Remember him? He played Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters II).
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