Absolute Zero (2006)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

And one where the hilariously ironic title is the only good thing about it and the most inspired it gets. Even for low-budget, Absolute Zero is very amateurishly done with editing as far away from slick as you can possibly go, tacky scenery with the beauty of Miami completely lost for obvious reasons, drab lighting and special effects that look as though they would belong in a disaster movie from 30+ years ago(even high school students have produced better than this). The music is sluggish and over-dramatic and at times it feels very misplaced and the muddied sound quality doesn't help it. The dialogue is horrendous, the jargon sounded like total gibberish to the point of incoherence, the dramatic parts were written in a hammy fashion and not in a while have I seen a movie with romances written as goofy as this one. The story verges on tediousness too often and riddled with ridiculousness and logic lapses. The science is completely unbelievable and sounds like it was made up on the spot, yes I am aware this is science fiction but this was a number of stretches too far, it was intelligence-insulting. If you're looking for fun, thrills or suspense, Absolute Zero is not for you as there is absolutely none of those three in sight. The characters are not engaging in the least bit and none of them seem to give a damn about their situation, like a woman's husband dying tragically(in a very clumsily executed way) and she barely grieves and the lead scientist certainly isn't that concerned about the Earth if he drives around in a Hummer that emits a huge amount of carbon. The acting is just as awful, Jeff Fahey yells his way through his role and Erika Eleniak looks bored out of her skull(don't blame her). Jessica Amlee manages to be the least bad, but that is not saying an awful lot. All in all a terrible movie with zero entertainment value. 1/10 Bethany Cox

OK, the Earth's magnetic poles can and have reversed polarity many times in the planet's history. And, as we know, ice ages do happen, and surprisingly quickly, too in geological terms. But one does not cause the other. I guess the scriptwriter needed a plot device to cause a sudden big freeze in which to set the events. But why "Absolute Zero", a temperature not found anywhere in the entire universe, and which causes more plot problems than it solves? I guess it made a better title than "Awfully Cold". And why Miami? There are very good reasons why ice caps are situated at the north and south poles of the planet rather than in a band around the equatorial regions. And by poles, I mean the axis of spin, not the magnetic poles. It may have been a trifle more plausible to have situated the action in Vancouver, where much of it was filmed, rather than Florida, but even then, credulity would be stretched thinner than graphene. Yes, the "science" is ludicrous, and I can't help feeling that the writer tried too hard to "explain" things. Yet, people seem quite happy to accept the impossible physics and engineering of superhero movies. It's called "suspension of disbelief", though I admit it does jar anyone who has a modicum of scientific knowledge. What I found irksome was the lazy production values: the CEO of a "billion dollar" organisation having such a meagre office; the neatly sawn-off tree flying through the air; the stock shot of rush hour traffic purporting to be the evacuation of Miami. Someone should have told the director that in an evacuation, traffic generally moves in one direction! Much criticism has been directed at the acting. It's not Oscar standard, sure, but it's not terrible, either. It's hampered by a poor script and even poorer direction. True, the mother and daughter did not show a great deal of emotion when the father died, but I'm sure the actors could have, had they been asked. I think it's terribly unfair (and sexist) to call Erika Eleniak an "aging playmate". One does not refer to Arnold Schwartzenegger as an superannuated bodybuilder. Oh wait, perhaps I'm wrong there. Everyone ages, and I, for one, think that Ms Eleniak has aged gracefully, and is still a beautiful woman. So there it is: cod science, ropey special effects, dicey script, earnestly acted. "The Day After Tomorrow" it isn't, but even that film would not stand up to much critical climatological analysis. It is a TV movie after all, if not a particularly good one. As entertainment, it doesn't exactly succeed, but it's not a utter failure, either. I think the general consensus of 3 stars is about right.

OK so the acting, dialogue and all the other stuff isn't as bad as people said it was; it wasn't good. The thing I will say is that the science is all wrong. They said that science is never wrong. Well unless their talking about some other kind of science, either they're wrong or science is wrong. If you haven't seen this movie then it's about the magnetic field is acting all goofy and north is south and south is north. And somehow that's going to bring in a new ice age. Tropics are icy, icy is tropic, dry is wet and wet is dry. So Miami (where it's mostly taking place) will somehow get so cold that the temperature will be absolute zero (- 273C).Now this has never happened because if it did, the atoms themselves would stop moving and collapse on themselves. Why? Because atoms cannot get any colder. But if this would happen there would have to be any light for billions of light years. This will not happen on earth because the sun isn't that far away. And also oxygen will solidify at -218.4C. If it got at like -200C we would be literally be swimming in liquid oxygen for a split second and then freeze to death. So if your breathing your swimming.

I watched this movie prepared to see some incorrect science for the sake of entertainment, but what I saw was NO correct science. Well, except for the part where absolute zero is -273 Celsius. That's the only thing they did get right.The fact that almost all the characters repeatedly say, "Science is never wrong", when the science in this movie is always wrong, must be a joke the writers played on the producers.The whole premise of this movie is that the Earth's magnetic field rotates 90 degrees in less than 5 hours, and this causes everything at the equator to cool down to -273 Celsius (absolute zero). That makes as much scientific sense as your dog freezing solid because he turned around counter-clockwise before lying down, instead of clockwise.The "scientists" in the movie even did a small-scale demonstration of this (before the disaster), by artificially rotating the magnetic field of a room full of plants. The whole room and the plants in it reached -273 Celsius. Rubbish.All the other science in this movie that follows and supports this idea is either flawed, or outright wrong. They even got wrong the conversion of temperatures between Celsius and Fahrenheit on the status display they kept showing.Not only is the science wrong in this movie, but there is a lack of internal consistency in the movie. For example, it's -170 Celsius outside, but people in a glass-walled building are wearing summer clothes and are not cold. It was previously established that a blast of cold air from the sky will freeze solid everything in an area, but a similar blast only freezes a vehicle and its driver, but not the little girl standing a few metres from the blast. The people in bikinis around a Miami pool don't notice anything wrong until it starts snowing, despite a temperature drop of 30 Celsius before the snow started falling.The characters are all clichés, and even taking that into account, they sometimes do things that don't make common sense.Yeah, I watched the movie for it's entertainment value. For the disaster. I'm used to suspending disbelief, and going with the flow of a movie in order to enjoy it. When a movie lacks internal consistency and basic common sense, that's just too much BAD for me.