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Y2K: A Reel Disaster NBC's movie is so badly written, acted, and directed it has to be worse than any possible millennial mayhem I can tell you with the utmost confidence this fine Monday morning that, come New Year's Eve, you shouldn't be afraid to use your ATM card, land on a dark runway in a jet, deliver a baby around midnight, or take a horse-and-buggy ride to crowded Times Square. The reason: I watched NBC's Y2K -- the Movie. The only thing that strikes fear in my heart is the notion that on Dec. 30, government officials still will need the Y2K problem explained to them and that they would put all of their faith -- and all of our fates -- in the hands of one computer whiz, Nick Cromwell (Ken Olin). Preposterous? Yes, but that's the whole premise of this movie, broadcast by the network in the prime-time Sunday 9 p.m. slot last night. Nick's credentials never get much more specific than "he's always the smartest guy in the room." But that's enough for the U.S. government to give him responsibility for making the whole country Y2K-compliant and monitoring the entire world from a war room-like installation in D.C. They also give him a supersonic jet so he can fly anywhere in the U.S. in two hours on Dec. 31-Jan. 1 (I guess no one's worried about Y2K problems in Hawaii). BIKER BAR. Nick's hopes for a Happy New Year crash with a Navy plane in the Marshall Islands, the first place on earth to achieve the millennial milestone. As midnight strikes around the world, so does disaster: power outages in China, Europe, everywhere. Except, thank God, a nuclear reactor plant in Sweden. No word of trouble there -- yet. But our hero Nick is too busy lining up ambulances and fire trucks that can light a dark D.C. runway to worry about a pesky little problem like a complete power failure on the Eastern seaboard. (Only a biker bar in Manhattan, for some unexplained reason, still has electricity.) Then comes word that everyone at that nuclear plant in Sweden is dead. This is critical because: 1) There are two reactors in the U.S. that are structured the same way, and 2) one of them is on Seattle's Emerald Island, where Nick's wife and kids live. He hops the handy supersonic to Seattle, where, with just seconds to go, he manually stops a nuclear meltdown that would have threatened half the U.S. population. LAPSES IN LOGIC. And by the way, everything was just fine at Emerald Island until "the smartest guy in the room" got the bright idea that everyone ought to reboot their computers just after midnight. But fear not, man triumphs over machine, and Nick is reunited with his family. Fade out. Now, I'm no Y2K genius, but if Emerald Island is Ground Zero for Y2K, why wasn't Nick working there in the first place, instead of directing traffic at a D.C. airport? Granted, NBC faced a huge challenge in making this movie. As there is no precedent for Y2K, no one really knows what could or will happen. Predictions range from nothing to "Apocalypse Now," and the movie tries to run the gamut, using Cromwell as a unifying device. But the plot holes and lapses in logic make it impossible to take the movie seriously, and it's so badly written, directed, and acted that it just collapses under the weight of all its faults. In fact, there was really no reason to make it other than to titillate viewers, and some quarters have condemned it for unnecessarily stirring up people's Y2K paranoia. NBC defends the movie as "fiction" and says it assumes its viewers "can tell the difference between entertainment and reality." I won't quibble over whether this actually qualifies as entertainment. But the reality is, Y2K -- the Movie is so laughably preposterous, it should make its viewers feel a whole lot better about "Y2K -- the Actual Event." Because whatever happens on Dec. 31, it won't be as painful as watching this movie. When she's not watching made-for-TV movies, O'Connell edits for BW Online EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
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