Meltdown: Days Of Destruction-a.k.a. "Lukewarm: Careers On The Back Burner"

The most lukewarm movie about heat you

Meltdown: Days Of Destruction is a disaster flick that follows pretty much every formula, including ones that make it bland, predictable, and completely forgettable. Poor Casper Van Dien is the lead in this endurance test, and while he's still got that certain something that makes me watch him, it's not enough to carry the heavy load of a plodding, hackneyed plot.

He plays a cop with an ex-girlfriend who didn't bother to tell him he was a father until his little girl (now eighteen) was five and already hating him. He also has a current girlfriend who's there just as a placeholder while the world falls apart and everyone realizes how important family is. The daughter naturally has an ex-con boyfriend a little too old for her, bringing down the ire of mom and dad, and gives us trite conflict that all resolves neatly.

We meet a scientist at the beginning who gives lots of dire warnings about how we really shouldn't be firing rockets at asteroids in space. Seems like solid advice, which comes to fruition when the asteroid breaks into three pieces, and the largest one skips across the Earth's atmosphere like a rock on a lake. The scientist turns out to be the brother of the new girlfriend, and so they all end up tagging along together.

There's a lot of useless setup to show what a good cop Van Dien's character is, which is all for naught as chaos ensues. Two days into the crisis the government lets the public in on the secret that yeah, the temperature is rising, and guess what? It's going to keep rising, and we're all gonna die. Let the riots and the looting begin!

For some reason everyone is trying to get to the airport, even though it's clear that vehicles aren't doing well in the heat, and are, well, blowing up. But these supposedly smart people are convinced an airplane landing at a specified time will get them all safely to the North Pole. Okaay... Why not? It's not like there's any logic to the rest of the movie.

Because they ran out of plot points in the middle of the movie, a dirty cop conveniently stumbles across the group, and kidnaps the brother, since the brother is the key to getting on the plane. We get gun battles, lots of scenes showing how cruel we are to each other in a crisis, unless you're the lead characters in a disaster movie, and road warrior style retro-fittings of refrigeration units on cars in less time that it took to get my oil changed last month. We also have to put up with lots of discussion about everyone's feelings, which made me feel slightly naseous.

To save you the terrible headache and craving for whiskey, I will now provide ending spoilers. You have been warned, and I emphasize I am doing this to help you, not hurt you.

At the end we get more gun battles, the North Pole-bound plane exploding in mid-air (which we don't get to see because they used up their budget on something, we just don't know what), and a completely ludicrous self-healing of the earth's orbit. It was mentioned earlier that the earth could just realign itself in a few days, and we'd know because it would start raining. So of course after the bad guy is dead, the dad and the new boyfriend have bonded over shooting people, the old girlfriend and the old boyfriend get back together leaving the new girlfriend to step aside all noble like because 'they belong together', and remaining bad guys have scampered off, what do you suppose happens now?

What's that sound? Oooh, oooh, oooh! It's rain! Rain! Our crops are saved! Although not really because they neatly skip over how much the world has gone to hell in a hand basket and the worst is probably still to come as everyone tries to rebuild and grab power and fight over the limited resources left behind.

But it's all okay. Something good does come out of it. The movie is over, and we never, ever have to watch it again.