Disaster movies always have little vignettes of everyday life. The dumbest in ``Armageddon'' involves two Japanese tourists in a New York taxi. After meteors turn an entire street into a flaming wasteland, the woman complains, ``I want to go shopping!'' I hope in Japan that line is redubbed as ``Nothing can save us but Gamera!'' Meanwhile, we wade through a romantic subplot involving Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck. Liv plays Bruce Willis' daughter. Ben is Willis' best driller (now, now). Bruce finds Liv in Ben's bunk on an oil platform and chases Ben all over the rig, trying to shoot him. (You would think the crew would be preoccupied by the semi-destruction of Manhattan, but it's never mentioned after it happens.) Helicopters arrive to take Willis to the mainland so he can head up the mission to save mankind, etc., and he insists on using only crews from his own rig--especially Affleck, who is ``like a son.'' That means Liv and Ben have a heart-rending parting scene. What is it about cinematographers and Liv Tyler? She is a beautiful young woman, but she's always being photographed while flat on her back, with her brassiere riding up around her chin and lots of wrinkles in her neck from trying to see what some guy is doing. (In this case, Affleck is tickling her navel with animal crackers.) Tyler is obviously a beneficiary of Take Your Daughter to Work Day. She's not only on the oil rig, but she attends training sessions with her dad and her boyfriend, hangs out in Mission Control and walks onto landing strips right next to guys wearing foil suits.
Characters in this movie actually say: ``I wanted to say ... that I'm sorry,'' ``We're not leaving them behind!,'' ``Guys--the clock is ticking!'' and ``This has turned into a surrealistic nightmare!'' Steve Buscemi, a crew member who is diagnosed with ``space dementia,'' looks at the asteroid's surface and adds, ``This place is like Dr. Seuss' worst nightmare.'' Quick--which Seuss book is he thinking of? There are several Red Digital Readout scenes, in which bombs tick down to zero. Do bomb designers do that for the convenience of interested onlookers who happen to be standing next to a bomb? There's even a retread of the classic scene where they're trying to disconnect the timer, and they have to decide whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire. The movie has forgotten that *this is not a terrorist bomb,* but a standard-issue U.S. military bomb, being defused by a military guy who is on board specifically because he knows about this bomb. A guy like that, the first thing he should know is, red or blue? ``Armageddon'' is loud, ugly and fragmented. Action sequences are cut together at bewildering speed out of hundreds of short edits, so that we can't see for sure what's happening, or how, or why. Important special-effects shots (such as the asteroid) have a murkiness of detail, and the movie cuts away before we get a good look. The few ``dramatic'' scenes consist of the sonorous recitation of ancient cliches. Only near the end, when every second counts, does the movie slow down: Life on Earth is about to end, but the hero delays saving the planet in order to recite cornball farewell platitudes.
