THERE is one big advantage of going to see the film Deep Impact. While you are in a darkened cinema for nearly two hours, you will be able to cogitate about the famine in Sudan, finalise your England World Cup squad, or weigh up the differences between Marmite and Bovril - you won't need to exercise a single cell of grey matter on this movie.

And there's no earthly reason why you should, either. The filmmakers obviously had their minds on something else at the time, too.

Quite simply, Deep Impact is a disaster movie with the emphasis on disaster. As uninspired and uninvolving a film as you are likely to see this side of Christmas, it failed to strike a single chord with me.

If you don't know, the premise is fairly straightforward. A massive meteorite is on a direct collision course with Planet Earth. If it does hit, it will cause an E.L.E (Extinction Level Event).

Er, that's it, really.

President of the United States (Morgan Freeman) reveals the truth to his obedient public but tells them that a joint Russian/American spaceship is heading out to plant nuclear bombs on the flying lump of rock, in an attempt to divert it off course.

Heading the square-jawed astronauts is craggy Robert Duvall, who plays a veteran spaceman with a glint in his eye from former moon landings.

In the meantime, budding television journalist Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) is trying to keep up with all the excitement, while attempting to reunite her parents.

There are a load of other characters introduced to us during the countdown to collision, but, frankly, they are all disaster movie cardboard cut-outs (loving moms, big-hearted dads, caring ethnic minorities), who are just there to be squished, flattened, drowned or saved in the final reel.

For most of the movie, the narrative moves erratically towards the moment of truth. Like most films of its genre, we know what is going to happen but we don't know when.

However, in the case of Deep Impact, we know what is going to happen, we just want it to happen quicker.

After a dull and dreary build-up, the meteorite has it's wicked way, and, at that climactic moment, the comparative high spot of the film is reached.

Pandemonium breaks out, with grown men crying, children disappearing, traffic jams clogging the roads and heartache all over.

But, of course, it could not be a disaster movie without having a happy ending. To give you a sickly taste of what I mean, the tag line to this movie is "Oceans rise, cities fall, hope survives". Enough said.

The acting, with the sole exception of the ever-reliable Morgan Freeman, is woeful.

The direction of Mimi Leder is disjointed, badly-paced and patronising.

The special effects are rubbish, too.

Add to that the dodgy moral tone in the movie of selecting who you want to live or die, and the flawed logic that the Americans are the only people seemingly affected by this holocaust-like happening, and it all starts to become very tiresome.

So, there you go. Bad acting, bad direction, bad effects and a bad headache.

I managed to finally decide on my World Cup squad, though, so it wasn't all bad.Simon Ricketts

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.