CineBad!!!

This is the story of Kimberly Wells, a plucky young reporter who wants to break out of the community bulletin beat and into “hard news.” While on assignment at a nuclear power facility, Kimberly and her crew steal some footage of what appears to be a critical situation in the control room. They try to put it on the air, get in trouble with their bosses, uncover secrets, and… stuff.

Maybe I’ve lost my ability to take movies seriously, but I was really hoping this would be a disaster movie in the grand tradition of The Towering Inferno. Alas, aside from the quasi-exciting beginning, and the tension-filled ending, most of the middle of this movie was pretty boring. It turns out that the contractors who built the power plant, as well as the people who run it, customarily skimp on safety checks, rendering the plant as unstable as a wino on Mass. Ave. It’s only a matter of time before the whole thing blows, and the molten nuclear core bores a hole straight through the earth, all the way to… China! The dreaded China Syndrome! However, before this happens, it’s much more likely that the core would simply hit ground water and cause a major steam eruption, completely vaporizing all of Southern California. Sounds pretty good to me!

Kimberly meets Jack Godell, (Lemmon) a senior engineer at the plant, who slowly uncovers the mystery. Jack knows that the plant is a ticking time bomb, ready to go off like a drag queen in K-Mart, yet nobody seems to give a shit what he thinks. Therefore, his only option is to go insane, eventually holding the control room hostage. Kimberly’s there, of course, because it’s the scoop of a lifetime. Watch for the pathos-filled surprise ending!

That’s about all I can say about this movie. It was actually pretty good, but somehow I find myself strangely at a lack of anything to say about it. Probably this movie was way more exciting in 1979, before armed stand-offs became a staple of the high school experience. Today, a crazed gunman in a nuclear power facility seems, well, a little banal. However, this shouldn’t hinder your enjoyment of the many twirling, spinning, and blinking “enunciator” lights in the control room set. This movie was kind of like “Space 1999″ meets “This Old House.”