Twisters

I suspect I'm not the only one here with a certain fondness for the 1996 disaster film {Twister}, because as a little tyke there was nothing cooler than tornadoes (that, and dinosaurs). As an older person, I appreciate the script work, the star-studded cast, and that brilliant cheesiness of the 90s blockbuster era. {Twister} remains a delightfully trashy guilty pleasure with plenty of charm and corny lines. It's a memorable film, if anything.

The same can't be said for {Twisters}, a sequel that nobody really asked for but was nevertheless dredged up from the bottom of the nostalgia barrel 28 years later. The sequel is meant to stand on its own, but at least much is the same in terms of structure and the spirit of its predecessor. This time we follow a young storm chaser named Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), who, after a traumatising tornado experience, faces her fears head on when a contractor invites her back into the field to 3D scan the horrific Oklahoma tornadoes. But what would a {Twister} film be without a bunch of tornado-loving hillbillies? Meet the cyclone clowns, the {Tornado Wranglers}, led by YouTube personality Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a hunky cowboy meteorologist who quickly gets on Kate's radar as the competition, with chemistry between them soon intensifiying.

Love begins with trouble, so we know where the tension between the 'big city' girl and the cowboy boy will lead. Edgar-Jones is no Helen Hunter and Powell is certainly no Bill Paxton, but it's all sweet and light-hearted enough to make you care about the characters as the tornado tears small towns apart. The titular main attraction will not disappoint tornado fans, it should be said. It's still, after all these years, incredibly amusing to watch hurricanes violently devour everything and everyone in their path. The devastation is very old school by disaster film standards, which will surely satisfy {Twister} fans out there and have meteorologists the world over tearing their hair out in unison at the film's volatile science and uneven realism.

I like Kate's stormy character journey, but beyond that, there's not much that surprises in this film. Although there is more of a contrived narrative this time around unlike its predecessor, it's not like you're going to memorise the unremarkable story thanks to its calculated predictability. You don't watch {Twisters} for the twists (sorry), though, because there's plenty of stormy mayhem and terror for all disaster lovers - minus the memorable cheesiness of the original.