BY ADAM QUANDT | The Statesman Director: Jonathan Winfrey
Genre: Action/Adventure
Length: 86 minutes
Netflix rating: 2/5
My rating: 2.5/5
What do you get when you combine “Armageddon” and “The Day After Tomorrow” with a very small movie budget? You get Jonathan Winfrey’s “Icetastrophe.”
I’m not really sure how this movie made its way into Netflix’s “Holiday Favorites” category (or even how it’s considered a holiday movie at all) other than the fact that the events in the movie take place on Christmas. However, “Icetastrophe” is a semi-entertaining movie as a comedy. Which is why it gets the extra half star from me.
“Icetastrophe” tells the story of a small town that gets hit by a meteor, which causes strange things to happen to the weather in the area. Following the impact, the town faces brutally cold weather from random occurring “flash freezes” and ice spikes popping up from the ground (I feel like this movie could’ve been filmed in Duluth in the winter).
The film follows two main characters, Charlie and a graduate student named Alex, as they attempt to save the members of the town while looking for a way to fix the winter weather problem.
As Charlie and Alex work on their tasks, Charlie’s son, Tim, ventures out into the elements in an attempt to save his lady friend, Marley.
Further into the film, Alex comes up with a brilliant solution. She hypothesizes that extreme heat would solve the problem and melt the core of the meteorite. Um, duh? Apparently it takes a graduate student to figure out that extreme heat will melt ice.
Charlie then comes up with the genius plan to use a crap-ton of dynamite to create the heat needed to destroy the meteorite. This is where my favorite line from the movie comes from.
After hearing the plan, Alex asks Charlie, “What do you know about dynamite?” and Charlie simply responds with, “Boom.”
Despite Alex and Charlie’s best efforts, while en-route to the meteorite via snowmobile the dynamite falls off the back of the sled and is lost to the storm.
If after reading this you’re just dying to figure out how Alex and Charlie are supposed to save the town after losing the dynamite, need to get your winter weather fix or just plain need a laugh, then check out “Icetastrophe” in the “Holiday Favorites” category of Netflix.