Meteorites! (1998 TV Movie) User Reviews

"Tell me I'm not Seeing This...."

[MartianOctocretr5 · 5/10 · 4 March 2007]

No, those words weren't mine; a character actually said them. But it's my sentiment. This one gets a 5 because it averages out: about a 2 in scientific plausibility, but up around 8 on the amusement meter, because it's so ridiculous.

Evidently, an hours-long meteor shower decides to strike all in one spot, even though the Earth is a moving target. Some little southwestern town that is known for not meteors, but UFO visits. The daughter of the hero is crowned "Miss UFO," while his son is threatened in a home invasion by some punk with a gun. It gets sillier. Miss UFO is in a toy spacecraft, celebrating her great honor, when the meteorites decide to drop in. They always hit a target dead on, never missing anything. Two of the most sublimely idiotic hits are a human victim reduced to smoking shoes, and a truck winds up having a big hole in it.

Whatever the hero is doing, the meteorites decide to interfere. They blast a bridge two seconds before he uses it, they blast a mine two seconds before he hides in it etc. Rescues are always effected with the same magic two-seconds-to-spare margin; in one case the rescue comes just before the toy UFO plunges five feet to destruction.

Every natural disaster movie ploy ever known is cranked out for your laughter, and this movie is a must for fans of this kind of campy silliness.

Not a meteoric movie, but not that bad either!

[Linda Lee · 4/10 · 26 March 2005]

This film has just been shown on TV on a Bank Holiday morning in the UK, and I think for that sort of occasion, it was just about right! Rather bland, nothing to frighten the children - an undemanding way to pass 90 minutes or so. I actually enjoyed it, though of course I was aware of the complete absurdity of the premise that the stream of meteorites constantly targeted this one small town in the back of beyond! I retain quite a fondness for Tom Wopat from watching Dukes of Hazzard all those years ago (I still like John Schneider too!). I loved Pato Hoffman as the native-American sheriff - what a gorgeous man, and his rapid healing must make him a very useful guy to have around - crushed leg one minute, barely limping the next! The teenagers were all much too pretty but no worse than your average disaster movie teens. All the 'scientific' bits were extremely low-tech, but then we've all been spoilt by the high-budget disaster films of recent years. Fairly dire script, but they did their best with it. Reasonably explosive SFX. Some very silly bits - loved the tabloid journalist getting his comeuppance!! All-in-all, quite watchable and really not as bad as some of these comments make it out to be! It didn't make any claims to be more than it was, and not every film made can win prizes, you know.

Stop the celebration and run for shelter.

[michaelRokeefe · 3/10 · 18 November 2001]

Nothing outstanding or out of the ordinary about this TV movie. A small Arizona town is celebrating its annual UFO Festival, when Mother Nature provides a fiery display. Comets collide in space shooting meteorites toward earth. My favorite line in the whole movie is, "I treated that truck better than my ex-wife". The effects are pretty low tech. And the acting is predictable and flat. Cast members include:Tom Wopat, Roxanne Hart, Abby Meares and Mark Murphy.

Absolutely Horrible

[MrVibrating · 1/10 · 20 June 2005]

I have an uncle who works at a large newspaper. By having that job, he and his colleagues are entitled free movies that the movie reviewers are done with. Unfortunately, my uncle is not high up in the "free movie giveaway"-chain.

As a result, our summer cottage is filled to the brim with crappy movies, such as "The adventures of Captain Zoom" and "Ivory Hunters". At first, I couldn't find Meteorites here on IMDb(Gasp!) but today I stumbled upon it. Oh bliss!

The basic plot of this movie is this: A small town in Arizona gets bombed by meteorites. Although the rest of the world is affected too, we never get to see any of it.

The characters are all hate-able, and I found myself wanting them to get killed. There are the usual elements; stupid authorities not listening to the sole guy who has a clue, stupid teenagers doing illogical and stupid things, stupid and annoying people not dying.

The movie is so boring, I'm surprised I managed to watch it. Anyhow, nothing special is done to stop the meteorite shower, people just hide in a cave, and then it's all over. Bleh. The final scene is the worst. The happy core family(I can't remember if they had a dog or not) are gathered outside their new house. Suddenly, the see something in the sky! A final meteorite to wipe them out? Of course not. It's just an airplane, and they laugh happily. I hate this movie.

must be the stupidest movie ever!

[twoten · 1/10 · 21 June 2005]

I thought I had seen some stupid movies in my time but this one is the champ! Does the writer of this piece of crap understand that the world turns? How could dozens of meteorites all land in the same place? And always just before the good guys are about to make it to safety? And how is it that everyone manages to survive all these close quarter explosions? Ever hear of the Tunguska Event? A single meteor the size of a volleyball would go off like a nuclear bomb and flatten everything for miles around.

The mayor is a particularly stupid character. He has no coherent reasons for doing anything he does except that he has the personality of a 14 year old boy obsessed with oneupmanship.

All in all a total stinker. The biggest mystery of all is how crap like this ever gets produced.

A little too predictable

[Sollus · 2/10 · 20 September 1998]

IMHO the acting was flat, the characters stereotypical, the dialogue cliche and the premise was contrived.

I didn't understand why a comet that was leaving a trail of meteorites across America suddenly started using one small town for target practice.

Some SciFi movies are bad enough to be good comedies, this isn't one of them.

This movie crashes & burns!

[paul bishop · 1/10 · 22 October 2002]

Tom Wopat and a grade-Z cast in a 1950s-style flick about meteorites hitting a small Arizona town. My favorite parts: Tom's daughter has just been crowned 'Miss Universe' during the town's UFO Festival ...and she's hoisted up in a cheesy UFO (by a crane) above the adoring townsfolk just as the rocks start crashing ...imagine sitting there, trying to look glam in your tiara, when everyone beneath you is getting bombed; then there's the obnoxious fellow (who you know just HAS to die) who is hit head-on by a small meteorite but his smoking boots are left standing. Oh the agony of it all -- both for the town and the viewer! If you taped it, this is a movie best watched in fast-forward mode.

Roswell attacked by meteorites instead of aliens set against a series of USA social interplays.

[VENEZIADOGE · 5 June 2000]

Meteorites is a classical USA movie that plays off of the alien reputation of Roswell, New Mexico and countless other commonly used B movie themes. In the movie, the town of Leroy is constantly bombarded by meteorites even though the chances of such an occurrence would almost be greater than the chances of finding a good movie in today's theatres! I believe that the same woman who played the mother in another USA movie, My Mother's Murder, is the central female figure in the movie.

Meteorites also has traces of Backdraft, Tremors, and many other "end of the world" movies. The most unbelievable aspect to this movie, like all other made for TV "destruction of earth" movies is that the person who discovers what is really going on is a housewife from the boonies. It is almost invariably never NASA or a highly respected objectivist scientist.

There are several humorous scenes in the movie, some which are totally laughable and inwardly funny. Meteorites is probably one of the more entertaining and watchable of the meteor/comet TV movies. Beware of celestial bodies coming

Mediocre-ites!

[Torgo_Approves · 3/10 · 16 April 2006]

Bland, unexciting sci-fi thriller that spawned from my beloved uncle's wardrobe of horrible movies he got for free from work. A small American city is threatened by a huge storm of meteorites. Less people die from the actual meteor shower than from their own severe incompetence and ability to screw everything up.

Obviously the movie's budget was too low to film any scenes of asteroid carnage, so instead the film trails off from the main subject of mass destruction and focuses on the lives and times of our ugly main characters, a couple of thieves, and the upcoming redneck festival...(wtf?) What we're left with is one final scene where all the good guys hide in a cave while the space rocks rain down outside. With no casualties at all. That's how bland this movie is.

The funniest scene occurs during the end. Panic has broken out in the streets and we find our hero, the typical American Dad, trapped in his own hospital with electrified water covering the floor. American Dad's screw-up assistant #1 tries to jump from a table to the window despite screw-up assistant #2's cries in protest, which results in a major electrocution which somehow transforms screw-up assistant #1 into a pair of smoking shoes.

Worth a couple of laughs but much too stupid and uninteresting for its own good. Watch only if you have too much time on your hands (like, if you're trapped in a cave for six hours). Otherwise, avoid at all costs.(r#13)

Like watching a train wreck I couldn't turn away

[rancryst · 2/10 · 7 May 2019]

Like others have said, this movie was just bad. Some movies are so bad they are fun to watch because they're funny or campy. This movie just makes you wish you could get those couple of hours back. The plot, acting, special effects everything is just bad bad bad. I mean Tom Wopat (Bo Duke) really is the best actor on here and his acting skills aren't even on par with "Duke's of Hazzard."

Bad, Bad, Bad...

[buiger · 2/10 · 25 March 2012]

Wow, this was stupid... And I even like stupid disaster movies!

There is absolutely nothing to praise in this film whatsoever. The cast is horrible (especially the lead actors), the screenplay is ridiculous and seems to have been written by a 5-year old, the camera is bad, and even the special f/x are horrible. And then the dialooooguuueeess. They should be cast in stone for posterity, since it is not possible to stuff any more stupidity into 90 minutes of film than what was achieved here.

Unfortunately they claim one has to fill in at least 10 lines of text in order to post a review here, but there is nothing worth 10 lines of text in this film! What a waste of time and money!

A joy to behold and to watch!

[dazduke01 · 10/10 · 4 June 2000]

There were reports of meteorite strikes all over the country. As the emergency services were over-stretched dealing with meteorite strikes in the big cities the towns have to look after themselves. If you adored Armageddon or dug Deep Impact then you'll love Meteorites!

Amiel Daemion is HOT!!! ...but the rest of the movie...

[sitar5 · 6/10 · 15 November 2000]

I cannot get over how incredibly voluptuous and bodacious of a female Amiel Daemion is... I mean... WOW!!! It is worth watching this movie just to see HER alone!

As for the rest of this movie, well... it seemed like your typical sci-fi B-movie... complete with semi-realistic explosions (like the van), and a fairly predictable plot.

I could go on to talk about the whole illogical premise of having a stream of meteorites hitting only ONE small area of the world... constantly... despite the earth's rotation, all the meteorites hit only ONE place!!! How much more do you need to have a B-movie? How about having Tom Wopat (from Dukes of Hazard TV series) as your main character? Yeah, that will upgrade things to A-movie rank... NOT!!!

However, I do have something good to point out about the movie... The musical score is really good... at least, it seems to fit very well with the movie. Though, not good enough to save it from going in my B-movie archive.

But when all is said and done, the mere appearance of the bodacious Amiel Daemion in the movie entirely makes up for the rest of the movie (at least, to me it does:) to make it... well... maybe a "B+ movie".

So many thoughts

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 28 December 2021]

What if we treated meteors like a great white?

What if the only person who could save us was Tom Wopat from The Dukes of Hazzard?

What if there are two kinds of people, ones who know Roxanne Hart from Highlander and others who know her from Chicago Hope?

And what if Chris Thomson, the same guy who remade Maximum Overdrive as Trucks directed it (yes, I know they were based on the same story)?

If a meteor - much less a bunch of them - hit the Earth, wouldn't it go off like a nuclear bomb?

Why do all the heroes in these TV movies have a troubled past and a bad marriage?

Ugh.

[Warlock-5 · 8 October 1999]

I guarantee you, just one hour of Meteorites! (they had to put an exclaimation mark in the title, didn't they) and you will fall asleep from boredom. I strongly believe that this mediocre meteor movie was filmed right here in Australia, as I can spot little Aussie things, like the packaging of chip cups and the fact that it is produced by Village Roadshow. Also, it stars Amiel Daemion, who is well known here for singing the hit song, "Addicted To Bass". In this film, she is flat and her acting range is limited. As for the plot, can you say "rip-off"? The special effects aren't that bad, but the film is so boring that you'll fall asleep before anything happens. And somebody call the props department, the Indian guy is supposed to have his leg trapped, but the block holding it down shakes around a little and lifts up when he moves. Please let this be the last TV produced disaster movie, before I saw this I thought "Volcano: Fire on The Mountain" was bad.

AUSTRALIAN CLASSIFICATION:

PG Medium Level Violence, Sexual References

Some diaster violence where you don't really see any impact occurs, as does some teenage sexual antics.

I don't watch these kind of movies.....

[layra96 · 2/10 · 16 February 2020]

Because they are good, I watch them because they are bad and that is what I love. Bad b rated movies where the crap is predictable. Sure it's a horrible movie but that is was I wanted to see. Watch at your own risk!

Dreadful!

[eskimosound · 1/10 · 19 June 2021]

This was a Wednesday afternoon movie on the TV. If such a thing exists it should be called a Z Movie. Dreadful just dreadful, in fact I'm not sure if I even saw a Meteorite the entire movie. Don't waste your time.

Space junk

[Leofwine_draca · 1/10 · 17 April 2015]

Yeah, this one's worse than even the SyFy Channel productions or the various Asylum movies. It's a homage of sorts to the big budget blockbuster flicks like DEEP IMPACT and Armageddon, except that it's made on a tiny budget which means the titular meteorites are horrid CGI monstrosities. Even worse, the narrative unwisely takes a jokey, comic approach to the material which falls flat from the very beginning.

I mean, there's nothing very funny about meteorites, so the film has to rely on groan-introducing character humour to work. This is a film where we're asked to identify with and like a cast of various oddballs, including dedicated heroes and annoying teenagers, and journey with them as they fight against the outer space menace. Except you won't, because the script is dire, the acting worse, and you'll be wishing death upon everyone in the cast before long. I think it's true to say that METEORITES! is probably the worst disaster movie you'll see.

Don't bother

[The Wiz-2 · 1/10 · 10 February 2008]

Hokey, and if ever there was a B - movie this one would not make the grade.

Why Tom Wopat would make this thing is hard to understand unless he needed to make a car payment because I doubt if they paid him enough to make two payments. The special effects look like they came out of a used car garage instead of a graphics production company. And the writing, if there was ever some pretense that a kindergardener could write a movie script this would be it. How this movie could make it onto any broadcast pay movie channels is hard to believe unless it was in a package distribution deal otherwise it should only be available from a 99 cent backwoods general store video rack.

Not bad, but predictable

[hummergirl · 4/10 · 3 January 2015]

Contains Spoilers I watched this on the internet. If you're looking for scientific facts then you're out of luck. This movie stretches the imagination in the science department.

The premise of meteorites striking a small mid-western town and striking fear in the hearts of the town-folk, including the tourists who have come for the UFO festival is a good one, IMO. But really, the same small town getting struck repeatedly for 24 hours?

I actually cheered when the 'reporter' got hit and all that was left were his smoking shoes. I was hoping that would happen to the mayor too, but he survived.

Sub-plots aplenty including teenagers in love, the hero trying to get over his past, the mayor with his financial problems.

All in all it wasn't a bad 90 minutes, could have been worse. If you want to watch it, just remember to leave ALL your science knowledge behind because this is just 90 minutes of entertainment, not school.

Classic B Movie

[jfatty · 5/10 · 28 June 2008]

"I will never view the sky the same way again" "Riveting" "A Classic" A 'B' movie that really deserves a B rating for bad, which means good in my book.

Normally a bad B Movie needs girls in bikinis screaming to keep your attention. This one is so bad/good, that you will wait for the commercial, not wanting to miss a bad moment to go to the bathroom. Its that good/bad.

Each bad line will keep you "riveted" to the screen laughing aloud. Its as if it was written up the night before, or better yet, made up as they were filming, in true B movie fashion.

It has my coveted "Classic" status because of the ridiculous concept of meteorites scaring the town, Jaws-like fear of the town Elders afraid of the UFO festival being called off, and equally bad reactions to every situation.

They spent way too much section: UFO-ologists costumes were more interesting than the meteorites special effects. A obvious Mis-Direction of films $275 budget for special effects.

Favorite scene: Miss UFO being raised above the stage in a "Flying Saucer" while the stage catches fire from a direct meteor hit. (What would be the odds of that happening?!) First cheered by the audience and now being slow roasted by the fire. Doesn't get any better than that.

Favorite line: Bad guy to the corrupt mayor. "If I go down,(say it with me) you're going down with me" I hope I didn't build the expectations to high for you. Just sit back to enjoy each scene as it unfolds. There is real genius in the simplicity of this wonderfully made B Movie.

You have my guarantee,"Chicken Littles" of the movie goers. You will never view the sky the same way again after seeing "Meteorites!"

Innocent and Light Sci-Fi for TV ...

[Vic_max · 6/10 · 11 January 2008]

Given that this is a made-for-TV show, it's not that bad. It's very light and innocent in tone. The dialog and characters are the strength of this movie. No, they are not well-done, but rather just "decently" done.

Basically, this movie is about a town that is about to be ravaged with a flurry of meteorites. The earth is passing through a comet's tail and the town is looks like it's in the wrong place at the worst possible time. The movie follows the stories of a few groups of people.

The sci-fi element is present because of the meteorites, but it doesn't go much further beyond that. The story is pretty much a simple "watch out for the falling rocks" instead of "how are the scientists going to save us?" story. Nothing more.

The characters, as mentioned earlier, are barely interesting. However, mediocre as the whole movie was, nothing really got on my nerves. So as far as a movie that is barely sci-fi, that is sometimes a plus.

I don't recommend watching this movie unless you have it on in the background and are doing something else. For sci-fi fans, it's kind of like pleasant background music.

Not so bad, really

[alkudsi · 6/10 · 11 April 2013]

I'm grateful to the question board for reminding me of the correct title for this movie. I've seen it several times (probably on SyFy Channel), and it was a lot more memorable than some of their other disaster movies. Why? I remembered it well enough to describe the plot so that someone recognized it. I thought there was some interesting chemistry between the husband and wife characters (Tom Wopat and Roxanne Hart). Was it believable? As much as any other meteor movie (and more than some). Would I pay to see it in the theater? No, obviously not. (Of course, I didn't pay to see Tommy Lee Jones in Volcano, either.) Was the science decent? Actually, pretty good.

The plot was pretty good, with some nice teen-aged angst thrown in. It did have some interesting plot twists. Great for a late night mind relaxer.

Like others, I got duped into the 2-tape package said to contain it on Amazon, and which did NOT contain the movie. I wouldn't mind finding a reasonably priced copy of it for my collection of disaster movies, though!

Town based scenario

[minty1364 · 6/10 · 27 June 2015]

One of those afternoon disaster films that is no way a big budget production, but relies on a story, a family, a town and the mayor of that town and what happens when meteorites threaten the whole region, focusing on this one town and what they have to deal with has the threats looms closer and closer. Throw corruption and criminals into the mix to add to the storyline; how will the town get out of the impending disaster? Not a big Hollywood production by far, but good enough to watch.

It's nice to see Tom Wopat and Roxanne Hart, but this is because it's a film from the 1990s. As I watched this film in 2015 (17 years on) it didn't seem out of date, which was a plus.

i fell asleep...

[hotbuddy43 · 5 June 2007]

watching this movie. the budget must have been from bingo winnings.there are some cool effects, the actors all seem like they are waiting for the lunch truck. music would have helped on the non meteor shots.some of the actors were on TV shows that did not last a season or 2.you do get the sensation of wanting to change the channel but you flip back to see what is happening if you do.it will all be over soon so just enjoy watching if you are still awake.this movie looks like it should have came out in the fifties when "The Blob' and "I was a teenage werewolf" and "night of he living dead" those types of movies. nothing to it boss.