by Linda Holmes

While watching the Golden Globes and the tribute to Steven Spielberg, I got talking to a friend about Twister. Not a movie I think about very often -- not a movie anyone thinks about very often. Except maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman, who thinks, "Wait, I was in Twister?" (Yes. Yes, you were. And also Patch Adams. The Robin Williams silly-doctor movie. We won't tell the Academy.)

But what's amazing, in retrospect, is how terrifying and fabulous the Twister trailers were, particularly compared to how flat the movie is. Sure, the trailer has the advantage of skipping over the boring bickering-exes business between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, but it also suggests far more movement and genuine suspense than the movie comes anywhere close to delivering. Even more than the trailer above -- which is a corker -- I remember a trailer I can't find online now, which featured an almost entirely dark screen as the sounds of the tornado approached, rattling the...root cellar, or wherever we were meant to be hiding. I don't think any of the movie was even shown; just the sounds in the dark theater. And I came home thinking, "I cannot wait to see that movie."

And then that movie turned out to be Twister.

Has this happened to you? I'm not talking about ordinary situations where the clips make the movie look better than it is. (And some other time, we will discuss the trailer that tells the entire story and thereby ruins the movie, which is a separate pet peeve.) I'm talking about sitting in the theater sounding your internal "WOOOO!" only to find, a few weeks later, that you have been wooed falsely, as it were. You have hooted in vain. Tell your tale. We care about your wasted hoots.

categories: Movies

11:30 - January 13, 2009

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