• Starring: Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall.
• Directed by: Mimi Leder.
• Length: 123 minutes.
• Rated: PG-13, with profanity and disaster violence.
• Jack's rating: 4

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(May 8, 1998) -- Sure signs of approaching summer: Geese fly north, lilacs bloom, temperatures rise ... and a giant asteroid is about to blow the Earth to smithereens on movie screens!

Yep, Deep Impact, the first of the season's disaster thrillers, is opening. In it, a TV newswoman (Tea Leoni), the president (Morgan Freeman), a team of astronauts (led by Robert Duvall) and a pair of teenage newlyweds (Elijah Wood and Leelee Sobieski) try to stave off the end of civilization as we know it.

If you don't like this version (which is certainly possible), don't worry: Bruce Willis tackles the same story line in Armageddon, a comet disaster flick due on July 1. It never rains but it pours.

Deep Impact starts promisingly. A young astronomy club member (Wood) discovers something in the nighttime sky. He sends photos off to a real astronomer, who is shocked to realize it's a comet due to hit the Earth in a year.

As he rushes to alert authorities, the astronomer is run off the highway by a truck and dies. That's the first clue Deep Impact is deeply flawed: The crash is shamelessly telegraphed and serves no purpose in the plot.

Other predictable, superfluous incidents follow. And director Mimi Leder doesn't help the overcrowded narrative by repeatedly jumping ahead in her story.

Leoni plays ambitious TV reporter Jenny Lerner, who gets a shot at stardom when she uncovers "the story of the century": The U.S. government is preparing an elaborate plan to save 1 million computer-selected individuals in underground bunkers when the comet strikes.

But before Lerner gets the real story, the film wastes 10 or 15 minutes as she follows a bad lead involving a political sex scandal. Yawn: Hollywood still thinks this is juicy stuff.

The story shifts again, this time following the exploits of astronauts sent into space to nuke the asteroid.

Their efforts generate the film's only true suspense, especially when they're working on the volatile surface of the asteroid. And Robert Duvall has more than enough talent to find the rare human moments in the hokey plot.

Meanwhile, the junior achievement astronomer decides to marry his school sweetheart. He's been picked for the underground bunker, and thus can take his "wife" with him. Never mind that they're both 14.

As you'd expect, most of the film's special effects involve the Earth's inevitable collision with a comet, especially when a 2,000-foot-high tidal wave is launched. (I'm not giving away any more than you can see in the film's trailers, which have been all over TV.)

Yes, it's fun to see a wave knock the Statue of Liberty off its base and topple the World Trade Center. But frankly, the wave isn't much more impressive than the floods of computer-generated lava we saw in last year's volcano flicks.

To be fair, Deep Impact tries to put a human face on disaster. Most of the storylines show the anguish of people who know the end is near. Some of those moments are touching and realistic, though others seem sudsy and contrived.

What really dooms Deep Impact, though, is overcrowding: too many characters, too many plots. The film just isn't deep enough to have an impact.