minch007 I was wide awake and ready to enjoy a movie when I put this 2 part tele movie on. 20 minutes into it and having trouble staying awake. The repetitive, monotonous muzak, the annoying, pointless twaddle passing for dialogue, and the 50 gazillion camera angles (someone's desperate attempt to add drama??) and the constant use of freeze frames of actors with utterly expressionless faces...as if they needed to slow the pace even more? As if emphasizing how bored the actors are? my only motive for staying awake and watching to the end was to be able to properly pan this digital Stilnox. But I gave up halfway through part 2. So maybe it suddenly got much better after that. From what I saw, apparently the British response to flood disaster is to 1. show no emotion 2. state the obvious repeatedly "there are millions of people" (5x) "we need to get out of here" (12x) "we need to get to higher ground" (21x) 3. run around pointlessly at street level 4. go and make a cup of tea. I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because it was mildly and briefly interesting to see Nigel Planer (Neil from The Young Ones) in a military role.

SnakesOnAnAfricanPlain This is a review of the 3 hour miniseries version, rather than the heavily edited 100 minute cut. I had originally only planned to watch Part 1 today, but I was sucked in and quickly put on Part 2. That has to say something. The film certainly grabbed me, but I must admit to being a sucker for disaster movies. It had all the twists and turns you would expect. Cruel public officials, broken marriages, scientists deemed crackpots turning out to be right all along. With three hours to get through, it certainly covers all the angles. After a storm hits Scotland, it soon becomes apparent that the storm will sweep along the east coast of England and eventually flood London. The cast is varied from bad roles and bad performances, bad roles but good performances, and passable roles good performances. Carlyle and Gilsig are the usual divorced couple, forced back together by this natural disaster. Courtenay is Carlyle's estranged father, they are also forced back together due to the flood, as they all happen to work within the parameters of the same field. Most notable are smaller performances from Nigel Planer as the head of the MET office who failed to predict the storm. He feels genuine grief over the tragedy he could have helped avoided and an early performance by Tom Hardy. He is the only real person that feels human throughout. He has some completely unrelated dialogue regarding his mates and a dog. It is perhaps the only time we hear somebody talk about something other than the weather. Seeing a big disaster in England is a welcome change and the effects were actually quite good. The film does have many flaws though. It is incredibly predictable and the bulk of dialogue is exposition or corny family feuds. The editing is annoying, as it constantly freezes and shows us the time, or flashes back to something we saw just minutes a go. The music is very repetitive. I had the main 'dramatic' tune down within 3 minutes (no exaggeration). Towards the end of the second part, all the real threat is over with and they spend a good forty minutes unflooding London. This makes for a film that has reached its climax much earlier. However, if you like seeing disaster films just to see how different parts of the government would react, this is mostly competent.

Chilla Black there have been some half decent disaster movies like 2012 and Knowing and there have been some total berserk ones like Volcano in New York and Arctic Blast.This entry into the canon has been totally panned by other IMDb reviewers, largely for the so-called poor acting of what at first glance resembles an ensemble cast with the likes of Robert Carlyle, David Suchet and Tom Courteney. Personally, I think Nigel Planer was put on this planet for his role in this movie to be honest it is the best casting I have seen in ages.Anyway, the plot is an insane event where London is subjected to a Tsunami. Some of the action scenes are OK concerning the seismic waves and disaster effects.On the other hand the command of London in the depiction descends into farce but I cannot see why Suchet is so panned for his role in this movie as his acting is not poor.If anyone likes seeing what would happen if London was rocked by a massive amount of water, check this movie out. There is a phrase reserved in the event of something like this; it goes something like "London isn't working".1 - 2 - three!

Enchorde Recap: A catastrophic and unpredictable storm hits northern Britain causing massive floods. Against all experience, the storm then moves south and finally reaches London where everyone is mostly unprepared for it. Caught in the middle of it is the family Morrison. Father Leonard is the professor that devoted his life to preparing for London and is the only one who recognizes the threat. His devotion has left him and his son Rob estranged, but Rob is still the engineer that knows the Thames Barrier best, the only but hopelessly overwhelmed defenses. And the Barrier is run by Rob's ex Sam.Comments: A good idea in the footsteps of The Day after Tomorrow. However, to make a movie of this kind work you need either massive amounts of water (and allowed to cause massive collateral damage) or massive amounts of CGI. Of course everyone opts for the second, but then you really need enough to make the images plausible. Flood don't quite cut it. Too much of the footage is too clearly fake, too clearly the result of CGI to make it believable. Sure, I know that even if the movie looked good it would be fake footage, but the images need to look real.I think the people responsible realized this and the response was to fill it with subplots focused on the people involved. We have one main one in the Morrison's, but there was many others. Actually too many. In what seems to be an attempt to cover up the fact that they couldn't provide good enough images it is filled with small subplots of either missing family or guilt ridden characters. But they are too many, and too little time are spent to really invest in them, they become rather uninteresting. I got the feeling that they was there to cover up plot holes in the main plot instead of really contributing something. So, this was not so good. OK, for a rainy afternoon when the flood risk is low, but nothing more.5/10