It is never easy trying to sum up a two-and-one-half-hour movie extravaganza like Die Hard With A Meteor in less than a six-ninety-nine paperback novel, but I shall try:
First, the Space Shuttle gets destroyed, then Little Richard (who is a dog) attacks Godzilla, but he survives. The Chrysler building doesn't. Then some middle-aged character actor playing Elijah Wood, an amateur astronomer, peers through his backyard telescope and discovers an Extinction Level Event, in the form of a meteor, hurtling towards Earth and names it after his shrewish wife, Dottie, who lets him keep a telescope obviously more powerful than your basic 200-inch Mount Palomar model in the yard, but is pissed because he won't eat his Stouffer's.
Then Bruce Willis gets upset because Ben Affleck not only almost broke a pipe the night before, but he must wing Ben with a shotgun because Ben had been slipping his pipe to Liv Tyler. Before he kills Ben, though, they strike oil, forget about the Greenpeace boat next door, and the Air Force takes Bruce to Billy Bob Thornton, who tells him that in eighteen days the world will end, which is a secret, because nobody outside of NORAD and NASA seems to have noticed that New York had been destroyed yesterday. So Bruce tells Billy Bob he needs Ben and Buscemi to blow up Dottie because NASA screwed up when they stole the patent plans for Bruce's big drill.
NASA unveils two prototype shuttles ready to be launched, even though they are under-funded by 97%, and sends Bruce and Ben and Buscemi and their buds to MIR, which the Americans promptly destroy even though one crazed Russian, whose Uncle Max built MIRV-guidance systems to bomb New York (nu, who was to know?!), had kept the thing in orbit (alone) for eighteen months, but they rescue him, because it said to in the script (because they need him in the second-to-the-last-scene).
Then the two new shuttles do a Wile E. Coyote slingshot around the Moon and come up Dottie's backside, and one of the expensive new shuttles gets blowed up real good, but that's okay, because Ben and the Russian and the Black Guy don't die, and they are important to the story, but the rest of the crew wasn't. They do get lost, however, but that's okay, too, because it gives Ben a chance to drive the mole machine which works.
Meanwhile, on the shuttle that doesn't get blowed up real good, but does get so many astronauts splattered on its windshield that not just the wipers, but the antenna breaks, Bruce and Buscemi and The Obligatory Jolly Fat Guy and The Obligatory Stupid Female Astronautess and the astronaut playing Gene Hackman discover that their drill not only won't work, but goes flying off into outer space, which means that President Henry Fonda (played by some actor who isn't Morgan Freeman) orders General Buck Turgidson to set off the nuke by remote control (against the advice of both Billy Bob and Bodhi Elfman, who seems to be Pierce Brosnan, but may be Peter Sellars), but no one can remember if Goldfinger had Oddjob connect the timer to the red wire or the blue wire, which gives the guy playing Matthew Broderick time to interrupt the uplink so that Steve Buscemi can become Keenan Wynn (which is okay, because Coca-Cola isn't sponsoring this movie, so no vending machines were harmed in the making of this film). It also gives Ben Affleck time to drive up in the mole machine which works. (We know it works because it was made by Victorinox, the makers of Swiss Army Knives, and has their logo prominently displayed under the windshield.) Fortunately, although Ben's pipe bends, John Agar isn't in the movie, so no Mole People appear, and even though the really cute astronaut dies, the guy playing Gene Hackman doesn't, so they can escape before Bruce Willis becomes Slim Pickens, but with enough edge-of-your-seat tension left so that the Russian from MIR (remember him?) can make a joke about everything being made in Taiwan, slap The Obligatory Stupid Astronautness around and save the day (again).
Finally, the Earth is saved, except for France, which is okay, because even on The Simpsons they know that it's everybody else's least-favorite country, the audience gets to see a montage of scenes from Fail Safe and from last year's Bank of America commercials (or were they from Countrytime?), and, most importantly, Billy Bob gets the patch and Ben and Liv get married. The End.
Four things make Armageddon stand out from the the typical action-adventure-science-fiction-end-of-the-world-movie. First, rarely can one see sooo many different films for one admission price. Second, it's rated PG-13, so we don't get to see Liv Tyler's tits (or Ben's, for that matter), and Steve Buscemi never finishes the line, "Yippee-ki-yay, . . ." which is in all of these Die Hard movies. Third, The Black Guy doesn't die first! (The Hawaiian guy does.) Finally, everybody in the audience, this reviewer included, gets weepy when the little boy runs up to his Daddy, who is obviously not a salesman, as his divorced mother claims, but really Shane in astronaut drag; thus, we know that Armageddon is ART, and not just a slap-dash action movie made for enough money to film DOZENS of movies by the people who directed these very same cast members a few years ago when they were hungry actors doing quality independent films playing at your local Laemelle theater . . . which Armageddon isn't.
This review upset a lot of Ben Affleck fans who visit our site, but just to let you know that at least some people appreciate the Shea-man's On_Line Reviews, we present the following note which was left in our Guestbook:
Record 223 Name: stiltz Website: Christine's Page (i think) Referred by: Just Surfed On In From: do you really care? Time: 1999-05-02 03:36:00 Comments: I don't usually sign guest books, I think that it's a waste of time really. I would just like to say that the review of Armaggedon was the damn funniest thing I have ever read on the internet. Congratulations! You reached out and touched someone's life. Actually you didn't but that's okay.