TV weatherman Bill Harding is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife, Jo, to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend Melissa.

But Mother Nature, in the form of a series of intense storms sweeping across Oklahoma, has other plans.

Soon the three have joined the team of storm chasers as they attempt to insert a revolutionary measuring device into the very heart of several extremely violent tornadoes....

Yes the film is utterly ridiculous, and like other De Bont movies after Speed, completely devoid of plot, but one cannot deny, that this film entertains in droves, and like many other summer blockbusters of 1996 is a lot of loud dumb silly fun.

What ever plot there is involves trying to get microchips into a tornado, so the warning time can increase, but when you have flying cows, and flawless effects, does plot matter.

If we're to come out now, it wouldn't be as successful, as films like this are ten a penny nowadays, and there are more high concept ideas.

But for the time, it's an amazing feat, deserved of it's box office and cult following. The cast are fun, and it's always funny to see Elwes in a black van with a silent entourage, after all, he's the bad guy....

I like disaster movies when they are done right, and while Twister is no masterpiece it is a sort of guilty pleasure for me. I agree the script has its weak spots, the pace is rather pedestrian and the plot on the clichéd and unrealistic side of things. But Twister is nostalgic fun, with some decent direction and acting, complete with some pretty incredible special effects. The cinematography and scenery are also pretty good, and the score is effective.

Overall, Twister is no masterpiece in any shape or form, but to me it was fun and a guilty pleasure in some ways. While it could have been better it could have been much worse as well. 7/10 Bethany Cox

This special effects bonanza is merely an excusing for showcasing some jaw-dropping, state of the art special effects in a series of ever increasing set pieces. Forget any semblance of a real film, or plot, but just sit back and watch hundreds of buildings get destroyed on screen. There are many things to criticise in this film, the lack of plot being one of them. In between the storm sequences, the story is non existent, with the viewer just waiting till the next destructive moment. What we do get is some awful comedy filler which is so nauseating and abysmal that it's difficult not to press the fast-forward button.

The acting is all sub-standard, with Helen Hunt being the biggest offender; I haven't seen this level of awfulness for a long, long time, and I do watch some bad films. The only actor of note is Bill Paxton, someone who I've watched just go from strength to strength as his career progresses, and all the best to him. Although he is adequate as the square-jawed hero, the rest of the cast are just playing plain bad, stereotypical characters, and the women seem to think they're in a melodrama or something. Television level, it really is. And silly, and childish.

Steven Spielberg is probably to blame, acting as executive producer. Although this guy is talented, he's also painful sometimes too. Jan De Bont shows us that he's incapable of directing a film apart from the special effects sequences, will somebody give this guy a clue? The storm sequences are the best things in this film, and basically they just keep getting bigger and better. This film should have been in 3D, with the things that keep flying at the camera. Item after item is hurled into the sky and then comes crashing down, be it cars, cows (yes, the cow scene is hilarious),tyres, planks of wood, trucks, petrol tankers. The most jaw-dropping moment is when a house rolls across the road in front of our heroes. These moments are totally implausible of course, with Paxton and Hunt miraculously surviving the devastation every time, but I loved them anyway. Watch TWISTER for the effects, but don't expect anything else to go with them.