A typical disaster movie with some great special effects.

Think [[Titanic]] on a global scale, and you’ll get the idea.
Instead of a ship that’s doomed, it’s the entire planet. Will humanity
survive? Will Tea Leoni be able to act? How far in the future is this
(there’s a black president played beautifully by Morgan Freeman, and surely
it’ll be several years before our country can get past the stupidity of
racism, but I digress). Will there be an explaination as to why everyone
remains so calm until finally they’re dead?

##So why see this movie, anyway?

The only real reason to see this movie is for the special effects.
Unfortunately, there’s not enough of them. The big new effect was the
disaster after the comet hit, but that only lasted about a minute. The
rest of the effects were pretty much standard space shots of ships zooming
through the debris in the tail of a comet (for a much more interesting
jaunt through that sort of thing, see the big chase scene in “The Empire
Strikes Back”, filmed some 17 years earlier!!!).

##The irony was palpable

The most interesting thing that happened at the screening I saw was that 30
minutes from the end of the movie, the theatre lights came up and a voice
intoned on the loud speaker “Please exit to the front of the theatre.” It
wasn’t a joke. They had to evacuate the theatre for some (still) unknown
reason. Was there really a comet headed towards Earth? At least I got a
free movie ticket out of the deal.