Exponentially Astronomical
When the home belonging to the McConnell's is flattened in an explosion, Sheriff John Whitehorse (Pato Hoffmann) can't get any sense from the surviving daughter so calls upon former Phoenix police explosions specialist and new resident of Leroy, Tom Johnson (Tom Wopat), to examine the ruins. When he uncovers that the house has been destroyed by something falling from the sky and there are others who have been hit as well. When he attempts to warn Mayor Cass Cassidy (Marshall Napier) that the rest of the small town of Leroy is in danger he is more bothered about the tourist trade which comes from the annual UFO festival. But whilst haunted by accident in his past, Tom's expertise in blowing things up may be the key to the town's survival with an abandoned mine offering them shelter, that is if they can unblock the entrance.
I reckon that there is an app which could be made to sell to small studios which allows you to roll the dice and it randomly picks certain things; a location, a central character with a past which leaves them troubled, a tourist event for a mayor or politician to be focused upon and of course a major disaster for the troubled hero to save the day. I say that because I have come across more movies that I care to remember which runs to a formula and changes just a few things such as locations, names and the actual disaster. And now I have watched another one as "Meteorites!" runs to that extremely familiar formula.
What does that mean? Well in a way it makes "Meteorites!" one of those movies which doesn't really require watching but making it more like background noise that every now and then you focus on for a few minutes to see where it has got to. As such along the way we meet Tom and learn he suffers from guilt over someone who was involved in an explosives accident, we have his wife who is a science teacher, the shady mayor who couldn't care about the danger and even a couple of teenagers which you can pretty much guess will end up in danger of one sort or another.
The thing about "Meteorites!" is that not only is it a formula driven disaster movie but one which doesn't care for realism and is only interested in trying to be entertaining. That means we have some acting which to me hits tongue in cheek, some less than convincing special effects and a lot of caricature characters delivering some really peachy dialogue. As such I can't blame the actors for their performances especially when you have Tom Wopat trying hard not to laugh at some of the nonsense he has to say but it is all at one level which you could easily end up mocking.
What this all boils down to is that "Meteorites!" is no better or worse than most made for TV disaster movies with a familiar storyline behind some unrealistic specifics and effects. For those seeking fast paced sci-fi action it will end up simply a bad movie rather than an entertaining bad movie for those want something simple and frequently daft to watch.
