Absolute Zero (2006) Reviews

• "The Day After Tomorrow" without a budget

  farflungfloyd2006-08-04

  It's difficult to say where to start with this movie... The terrible script, the cartoon-like effects, the horrid acting, the stupid premise, the aging playboy playmate, the complete lack of scientific probability... Take away the hand full of things that were good about "The day After Tomorrow" and pile on a clichéd script and no money, this is what you will get. Quick plot: The earth's magnetic field switches polarity in a matter of hours, causing the temperature in Miami to drop to zero degrees Kelvin! This movie follows the intrepid band of researchers who said "I told you so!" Shudder. Shiver. Shudder. Shudder. This movie was so bad that I couldn't even watch it for the camp value. It was like watching a train wreck. You want to. But at some point, you just have to turn away from the carnage.

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• Absolute Zero--It's All in the Title

  julioecolon2006-11-26

  I like disaster films. It's comforting and entertaining to watch the world suffer imaginary cataclysmic events from the safety of one's couch. On the screen, everything goes kapow. Yet, the bowl of parmesan popcorn is within easy reach of my greedy paw and a cold beer froths in a mug. I sat through this film bored and annoyed, however. This is the kind of movie that begs the question: why make bad movies? Why go through the expense and the trouble when, given the effort, the results are so unaccountably awful? What is it exactly that propels unscrupulous producers, untalented directors, and third-rate actors to collaborate on cinematic ventures that never should have seen the light of day? Who makes the decisions to bring such aberrations to life and who stands the most to gain from them? Adam Sliwinski and Michael D. Jacobs, director and producer respectively, and the many actors of limited craft who participated in this film, all of you should be embarrassed to have this dreck floating about.

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• Ouch

  bzmingus2007-01-23

  I feel dumber for having watched this. The acting is awful. The plot is ridiculous. The storyline is completely nonsensical. Even if you rent this to get a glimpse of Erika Eleniak you will be disappointed. Yes she is in there, but the term 'aging playmate' is painfully accurate. Effects: laughable. Character development: a joke. I can not say enough bad things about this movie. Maybe it was intended as a joke on 'The Day After Tomorrow'. If so, its not very funny. Jeff Fahey's mom turned it off half way through. Ugh. Gack. Bad. Horrible. I want my hour and a half back. It is a struggle to come up with 10 lines about this movie without resorting to repeating the words 'sucks' over and over again. The science is bad. The acting is bad. The filming is bad. The concept is bad. This is a bad movie.

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• Hilariously Bad

  reo_iv2006-10-01

  I rented this gem knowing it was a Day After Tomorrow clone. I expected it to be campy and bad. The special effects were hilarious and just bad. Some times it would be an entire CG shot that looks like some freshman's work with making a 3D model at art school. Though the best part of the movie is the constant statement that "Science is Never Wrong." If I was playing a drinking game I would have been plastered by the end of this movie. Even the little kid in the movie said science is never wrong. The physics in this movie are laughable at best. The idea that the last ice age started 10,000 years ago and lasted 1000 years is hilarious. It was as if the writers, producers and actors couldn't be bothered to check a history book about the ice age anywhere. Let alone the idea of absolute zero. All I can say is they must have made this movie for what it was, a great no-brainer campy stupid flick.

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• Grab some popcorn, point and giggle

  firedrake-22007-07-17

  I don't hate this movie. In fact, I quite recommend it. Invite some friends over, make some popcorn, point and giggle. MST3K would have had a field day with this one. What's wrong with the movie? That might take longer than the actual movie to tell. Start out with the styrofoam and sugar Antarctica set, complete with a size-changing ice cave, a skeletal body (frozen for the last 10,000 years), the amazing archaeological feat, which no one has even got around to mentioning, of dating cave paintings all over the world to the same day, the ability to take scrapings of paint and find out where the magnetic poles were at the time the cave was painted... and of course, no one can survive absolute zero, except the people who painted all these cave paintings. And that's just the first twenty minutes. And of course, science is never wrong. But your science is wrong and mine isn't. A definition to start with for the filmmakers: Absolute Zero is the temperature at which all molecular motion stops. It is not a cold and snowy temperature. Apparently no one can survive Absolute Zero, but people behind lab doors. With skylight windows. And Absolute Zero has the power to cause time lapse photography. Absolute Zero can be predicted by a pair of ditsy grad students down to the last second. From analysis of paint scrapings. The filmmakers also seem to think that polar shift can occur either in a few hours, or in two hundred years. They need to be gently guided to the concept of geological time. And let's not forget that when telling someone to get into the lab when the compass needle points to a certain direction, it's helpful to say, "When you're facing the lab door" or something like that, because -- uh -- compass needles move when you do? I was fascinated to find that low temperature is actually what sucks people out of airplanes. I always thought it was low pressure. Hmmm, better be careful next time I go outdoors in winter. Continuity errors: the prop in Antarctica which blows down three times; the door which comes off its hinges but reattaches itself by the next scene. And of course, there are the acting jobs. The main character seems to think acting means wiggling his brows. I actually will cut the little girl a break -- and despite her awful stereotypical character, the girl grad student, who might conceivably have a future in acting. Of course, despite all the snow and ice, no one actually shows any sign of being cold anywhere in the movie. I still want to know why getting the government to fund scientific research is a Bad Thing. Is it just because it involves filthy lucre? Others have pretty much covered many of the other points I could make -- the difference between polar shift and axial tilt, the "poles" moving to the equator, where are the thousand years of darkness, etc., but I have one last question -- does the newswoman from the TV station have a direct tap on the US government's computers?

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