I'm not going to talk about the admittedly silly premise of the film, because it happens to be similar to the premise on which Val Guest built "The Day the Earth Caught Fire," a very good sci-fi/disaster anti-nuke drama from the early '60s. Guest demonstrated that the way to deal with a silly 'scientific' premise was to unravel it gradually, having no one accept it on face value, until it could no longer be denied; while concentrating your film-making abilities on the dramatic interaction between well-developed characters, supplying them with a convincing visual backdrop of the world eroding into chaos.
Well that certainly doesn't happen in this film. The reason other reviewers can complain about the silly premise is because there isn't really anything else to the film - the characters are flat, the dialog just streams of clichés, the dramatic interaction unbelievable when not completely absent - and the premise itself is handled very badly.
That leaves the question of whether the film presents a convincing visual backdrop of the imminent disaster of Miami suddenly freezing over. Question? actually, it's a joke.
Here's the tell-all moment about the budgeting of the film and the incompetence with which it is made - I think it half, but I remember the percentage higher, of the shots used to depict the effect of Miami's freezing and the response of the population there are localized on a single hotel swimming pool. That's right, a swimming pool, and a rather small one (low budget hotel for a low budget movie). The 20 or 30 people around it (popular swimming pool!) are swimming or lying around on deck chairs - then the camera shakes, and people get out of the water and people fall into the water and the camera shakes some more and people run around and scream - cut to CGI of birds eye view of Florida freezing over, cut to swimming pool cut to a small bit of beach front with obvious fake snow on it, back to the swimming pool, cut to the central characters trying to find each other through cell phones, then back to the swimming pool - it was amusing until it became patently obvious that the film-makers didn't care about their movie, didn't care to entertain their audience, only cared about getting paid for filling up a time-slot on a cable TV channel....
I admit that the first half of the film, particularly the episodes in the Antarctic are fairly well handled for a B-movie. But Once the film returns to Miami for the remainder, it sinks to a level of casual incompetence that only television allows for.
Not even a decent time-waster; I stayed just to see how dumb it could get. It gets pretty dumb, believe me.
Well that certainly doesn't happen in this film. The reason other reviewers can complain about the silly premise is because there isn't really anything else to the film - the characters are flat, the dialog just streams of clichés, the dramatic interaction unbelievable when not completely absent - and the premise itself is handled very badly.
That leaves the question of whether the film presents a convincing visual backdrop of the imminent disaster of Miami suddenly freezing over. Question? actually, it's a joke.
Here's the tell-all moment about the budgeting of the film and the incompetence with which it is made - I think it half, but I remember the percentage higher, of the shots used to depict the effect of Miami's freezing and the response of the population there are localized on a single hotel swimming pool. That's right, a swimming pool, and a rather small one (low budget hotel for a low budget movie). The 20 or 30 people around it (popular swimming pool!) are swimming or lying around on deck chairs - then the camera shakes, and people get out of the water and people fall into the water and the camera shakes some more and people run around and scream - cut to CGI of birds eye view of Florida freezing over, cut to swimming pool cut to a small bit of beach front with obvious fake snow on it, back to the swimming pool, cut to the central characters trying to find each other through cell phones, then back to the swimming pool - it was amusing until it became patently obvious that the film-makers didn't care about their movie, didn't care to entertain their audience, only cared about getting paid for filling up a time-slot on a cable TV channel....
I admit that the first half of the film, particularly the episodes in the Antarctic are fairly well handled for a B-movie. But Once the film returns to Miami for the remainder, it sinks to a level of casual incompetence that only television allows for.
Not even a decent time-waster; I stayed just to see how dumb it could get. It gets pretty dumb, believe me.