T'is the season for things to go boom! The summer movie season gets off to an early start with Deep Impact, an over ambitious sci-fi disaster film that never really evokes the feeling of doom you might expect. The reason being, really lame characterization. Tea Leoni, in a completely dull performance, stars as a reporter who gets the story of a lifetime. Unfortunately she might not be around long enough to share it.

It seems an asteroid the size of New York, is barreling towards Earth at breakneck speed. Once it hits, it spells certain doom for our way of life. The only problem is, you don't really care for any of these characters, because you never come to know them. The best performances come from Robert Duvall as a shuttle pilot, and Morgan Freeman as The President. Unfortunately, neither of these fine actors get much screen time. Instead, the storyline focuses on soap opera type scenarios that, for the most part, don't answer questions the audience may have. In fact, much of the screenplay is very confused.

The film's two best sequences aren't enough to keep you from looking at your watch. The first deals with a crew that is sent to land on the asteroid so they can blow it up. The second deals with the asteroid impact itself, which doesn't happen until the last ten minutes of the film--offering the usual plethora of special effects, which, ultimately, are not all that special. The tidal wave sequence in James Cameron's The Abyss was far superior.

The whole experience just wasn't that exciting, but then what do I know? I'm just a stupid critic! After all, Deep Impact did break records and enjoyed a 42 million dollar opening weekend. Quite frankly, I think this is a low-rent version of Irwin Allen's 70s disaster flick Meteor--which featured an all-star cast headed by Sean Connery. (Which is a pretty pathetic statement, considering Meteor wasn't a very good film either). Deep Impact may have had marginally better special effects, but Meteor had characters that I cared about. No one wants to see Sean Connery get it. In closing, I'd like to predict that Michael Bay's Armageddon is going to be the end of the world movie to end all end of the world movies.