Megafault

Since I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with Brittany Murphy in it, I felt I owed it to her legacy to watch one of her films. This SyFy channel-appropriate movie is about earthquakes ripping through the country across faultlines and swallowing whole cities. The feds send in seismologists to research it and they don’t get very far. Brittany Murphy is one of those experts. The film starts with an incredibly bad CGI mining blast scene and gets worse from there. I HATE watching films where I yell bullshit in the first minute of a film. I also realize I am not a fan of Brittany Murphy. I also heard there were a couple of scenes in the film shot in Davenport, IA (which I grew up near) – which is true since one of the first scenes was shot at the RiverCenter in D-port. And, as it turns out, the rest of the film’s scenes are shot in the Quad Cities and LeClaire, IA (despite the city names they put on the screen). And now that I know this, I’m embarrassed to be from there. Whether it's Lexington or Aspen, you'll find a Major Art and Hobby Store on the corner of 2nd and Perry, only wearing different clothes so you know it's cold - are viewers REALLY that stupid? All of the cities filmed get painfully and fake-ly sucked into the center of the earth. It’s absolutely ridiculous that someone would try to pass these scenes off as acceptable special effects. It’s probably the worst special effects I’ve seen in a Hollywood production. Yes, I was yelling at the screen, in fact. Loudly. Actually, I’m pounding out the letters on the keyboard as I type this. I really need to get this CGI-rage under control. Or maybe the film makers in Hollywood need to get their CGI shit together. Maybe Eriq LaSalle should get his shit together as well, since he was more believable in the Soul Glow commercials he did in Coming to America. The seismologist team decides to shoot a magic laser to freeze the underground water and create a second earthquake to cancel out the first earthquake. Then if things go bad, the Grand Canyon will absorb the second earthquake and stop it from spreading like the initial earthquake. This is the most ridiculous plot ever. And I’ve seen better special effects on an 8mm home film camera from the 1950s. I’m done with this review, or I’m going to have an aneurysm.