It's déjà vu all over again.
Just a fortnight after reviewing the fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie, here's another 'long time coming' sequel hitting the big screen. This time around, it's a modern take on 1996’s Twister, which starred Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton and a scene-stealing Philip Seymour Hoffmann.
And it’s pretty bloomin’ good too.
Daisy Edgar-Jones from Normal People stars as Kate Cooper, a meteorologist and former storm chaser. Following a terrifying and devastating encounter with a tornado, Kate Cooper starts a new life in New York.
One day, five years' later, former fellow twister-chaser Javi (Anthony Ramos) turns up to convince her to return to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. Despite her mental scars, she goes for it.
As she and her new twister team mates – who are being bankrolled by a local businessman of dubious character – swing into action, they find themselves competing with Tyler Owens (an irresistible Glen Powell), a charming but reckless social media superstar who posts his storm-chasing adventures.
Naturally, Kate and Tyler are oil and water opposites. But gradually, she warms to him as she discovers more attractive layers - for one, he's a qualified meteorologist rather than a mere chancer - once she scratches beneath the surface of his grinning grifter image.
It's all pretty predictable rom-com-in-a-storm fun, though the technical jargon on display seems both superfluous and a tiny bit tedious. Of course these people are smart. Otherwise they wouldn't know what they were doing.
The last 30 minutes or so, though, is where the movie really takes off , and in spectacular fashion.
The special effects are a given in a summer blockbuster such as this, but the idea of centring the final tornado challenge in a cinema showing the classic Frankenstein flick ('It's alive!') was a stroke of genius. A very Spielbergian touch in what's almost an homage to the patron saint of celluloid.
The performances are pretty solid and characters largely one-dimensional, but Glen Powell is pitch perfect as Tyler Owens. He really can do no wrong these days. Brewing up a storm, you might say.
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