Flood - Land of hope and clichés

Oh dear, where to begin. There are times when I'm proud to be British - we gave the world all sorts of things: tea, cricket, the Spice Girls - all of which are better than Flood. Flood tries to be like those big-budget American disaster films... but fails.

In its favour, Flood can't complain about a lack of acting talent. Perhaps the strangest thing is how many decent actors can come together and do so little. Actually, the answer probably lies with the script. It's bad. Well, not bad, just full of clichés. It's like they're trying to be funny and self-parodying, only they're not - they're being serious.

The film tries to crank up the tension by quick cutting and shaky camera work, plus some incredibly dramatic music just to point out just how dire the situation is when the Thames overflows and drowns half of London. However, despite the fast-paced direction and dramatic score, you have the dialogue bringing it back down to the quality of a sixth form drama production (no offense to sixth formers - I'm sure they'd do better).

The special effects aren't that good, but they're not that bad either. Basically, they can be forgiven, but the dialogue can't. It's not just the dialogue, it's the set-up too. It confirms to every cliché going: it has the family coming together in face of a catastrophe, the budding romance, the token characters who you know are going to be washed away in the first splash of waves and, of course, the inept officials.

I'm sure you've probably heard people say "It's worth a watch if there's nothing else on." Well, they're probably right about this one. If there was absolutely nothing else on TV, then you might put this on for a bit of background atmosphere. Just don't waste any money on this.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back