armageddon ( 1998 ) * * * ( out of four ) starring bruce willis , billy bob thornton , ben affleck , liv tyler , will patton , steve buscemi , michael duncan and keith david directed by michael bay rated pg-13 for planetary disaster , profanity and pillow talk theatrical aspect ratio of 2 . 35 : 1 released in 1998 running 150 minutes armageddon , in itself , symbolizes everything that is wrong in modern filmmaking . stories have been replaced with special effects ; character development gets overshadowed by bad dialogue ; plotting consists of a bunch of shit getting blown up . armageddon is as stupid , as loud and as shallow as any movie you'll see come out this summer , or maybe even any other summer . but i loved every freaking minute of it . believe me , i'm just as shocked as you are . hell , i don't even know why i went to see it in the first place . the previews were so annoying that i predicted this was going to be the worst film of the year , or at least in the running . i'm sorry , but " somebody dial 911 ! ! ! " isn't quite the tagging that's going to sell a movie . it isn't too wise either to market the film using the movie's stupidest lines ( " beam me up scotty " - yeah , that sure is great writing . . . ) . i mean , let's face it ; armageddon's previews rival the truman show's as being some of the worst of the year . neither of them even come close to doing their respective films justice . of course , you all know the story . when the earth is threatened with total annihilation via an asteroid the size of texas , nasa calls in the us's top oil drillers ( ! ) to go into space ( ! ) and implant a nuclear device eight-hundred and someodd feet into the asteroid ( ! ) . in the coarse of all this mayhem , we are introduced to some interesting - and not so interesting - characters . belonging to the former group is rockhound ( steve buscemi ) , a horny little womanizing genius who's always full of wisecracks , even when flying into space at a huge amount of g's . also , there's the always cool-as-hell billy bob thornton as dan truman , the bigwig at nasa who recruits all the drillers . he kind of reminded me of ed harris in apollo 13 , only without the intensity and great lines to deliver . then on the flip side of the coin is the tired , contrived character of harry stamper ( bruce willis , who does the whole movie employing with annoying accent i can't quite place ) , the leader of the pack as well as liv tyler and ben affleck as the token lovers you must have in any summer movie . basically , that's about it . as i said , this is hardly a film about plot . it's another summer blockbuster with plot points that are beyond unbelievable and dialogue and characters that are mostly completely wooden . case in point : nasa doesn't know that there is even an asteroid on it's way until eighteen days before impact - huh ? another example : at one point in the movie , two children are playing with toy space shuttles in front of a poster of kennedy . how pretentious is that ? ? ? ! ! ! want another one ? okay ; before the oil drillers blast off into space , one of them starts singing " leaving on a jet plane " , and soon , all the rest join in . did michael bay attend the school of sappy filmmaking before he made this picture ? but naturally , all this sappiness , melodrama and special effects accumulate to one bitchin' time at the movies . and don't get me wrong - despite all of the things i found wrong with armageddon , i still very much enjoyed it . so even if you don't win one of mcdonald's free tickets , it's still definitely worth checking out . 
