Armageddon is the quintessential "*****" movie, and I'm trying to think of how to explain what my circle of friends mean by that term without opening myself to the possibility of litigation. [As a matter of fact, the original version of this review contained the actual name of the theater I'm about to describe, which I can assure you is not "*****". Upon consulation with legal counsel, however, I have decided not to use the actual name of the theater. Which seems a shame, since name of the theater already connotes all that I'm about to try to convey -- to me, at least. But since you, the reader, start fresh, perhaps it makes sense to give the theater a name that also denotes as well. So let's use an assumed name, the Dustbin. And to further protect ourselves, lets say I've combined the attributes of several theatres of my acquaintance to muddy the actual waters even more. Got it?]

Okay. The Dustbin is a second (or third?) -run theater near my home. It's one of those old, run down movie houses -- and don't get me wrong, it was never a palace -- that has been split up into three or four smaller theatres. Thus, at any given moment the Dustbin is showing a small pile of second (or third?) run films. Of course, by the time these films make it to the Dustbin, the prints are not exactly what they used to be. And -- need I even say it? -- the Dustbin does not have THX or any other fancy digitial sound system. I trust you're beginning to get the picture.

What you can't possibly imagine, however, is certain other elements of the Dustbin ambiance. I'm thinking now of the audience. I'm not saying the typical Dustbin audience is any stranger than a train-car load of people picked at random as it pulls into the Wilson el stop on the Red Line. And, here again, for those of you who know what I mean here, you know just what I mean. For the rest, think crying babies, whining children with mothers yelling at them to shut up, some guy having a heated argument with a date that only he can see, rival gangs shuffling about menacingly during the film, making whispered (or far from whispered) threats or drinking restricted beverages or laughing loudly in various languages. Or serious (and I mean very serious) necking going on in the seats in front of you.

Now picture all this happening in the dark, with a very "previously-viewed" print of a movie like Armageddon flapping away up there on the screen. To be honest, it sounds like my idea of a perfect way to spend a Monday night.

For all those gory details (and those who have been there will notice I didn't say a word about the restroom facilities), the pros of the Dustbin experience far outway any perceived con. Starting with the price: a buck fifty on Monday nights. And you can pay for your popcorn and soda with a five and get some change back, unlike the same purchase at McClurg Court with its THX. And -- here's the quintessence of the Dustbin quintessence -- if you save your ticket stub, after the film, you check the number and see if it matches the number they've posted on the marker board. If you match, you get your next Dustbin movie experience free!

So now I can tell you what I would tell my friends about Armageddon, if they wanted me to review the film in under ten words: "Wait til it comes to the Dustbin." The fact is, films which look lousy at McClurg Court are improved merely by being shown at the Dustbin if only by relative contrast. Conversely, a nice first-run house -- where you pay eight bucks a head -- has a way of rendering a harmlessly bad film a true disaster.

All that said, Armageddon is a great Dustbin film. Even a better Dustbin film than Independence Day. The major difference between these two summer blockbusters I would identify as this: with Independence Day, because the production values were so slick, you got the feeling the filmmakers knew exactly how stupid their script was. They just thought the audience was stupider. Which is a little hard to take: being thought of as stupider than the script for Independence Day. With Armageddon, however, the idea you get is that even the filmmakers don't understand just how moronic the words and actions are. And somehow, that makes this film a little easier to take.

The best moment of Independence Day, of course, was the ten-second shot of the White House exploding (and read no political commentary there, merely a movie explosion connoisseur's idea of a real bell-ringer of an explosion). It was a highwater mark that lasted about ten seconds which the rest of the film fore and aft did not live up to. Armageddon, on the other hand, presents a special effects sequence featuring a meteor shower destroying New York City, that equals the best explosion of Independence Day and sustains it for an exhausting twenty minutes or so. It has to be one of the most breathtaking, jawslacking effects sequences I've ever seen.

And, accordingly, it sent my expecations rocketing at light speed and my subsequent disappointment was just as spectacular a crash when the rest of the film failed to deliver on all that promise. After the breathtaking start, Armageddon lurches into a dorky "personal relationship" subplot that takes forever to get going again. When it does, it 's with fits and starts. Unlike Independence Day, the production values are far from slick: the compositions are cluttered and badly lit, the staging of the action is messy, the editing jerky. You never know where your eye is supposed to go within the frame. I got tired of playing "where's Waldo" with the action, so I stopped trying for awhile half-way through the film. I tried this experiement: disengaging my left brain entirely, I tried to "receive" Armageddon entirely with my right-brain. Light, shapes, noise (there's lots of people yelling at each other); after fifteen minutes of this, I returned to my body -- and wouldn't you know it? -- I was able to pick right up on the story.

Then again, maybe it was while I stepped out, so to speak, that any ideas which may have been contained in the film were actually sent. For example, for all the impending loss of everything human and meaninful represented in the cosmic projectile headed straight for the earth, there was nary a scene where anybody stopped and considered for a even a moment what exactly was about to be lost. A few million years of human history (or thousand, depending on who you ask) about to be eradicated, and these practical people can't even stop to ponder the meaning and value of it all in the cosmic scheme of things. It's not like Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton's nasty space-invader film in which the subtext was that the loss of human beings probably wouldn't be such a bad thing in galactic history. But if you want even a moment to contemplate the awful implications of human extinction, you're on your own here. Which seemed rather an opportunity lost-- even for a meatheaded action film. Those meteor showers falling on New York and Paris were realistic enough for me to start drifting into feeling a sense of poetic tragedy -- but I was quickly jarred from any of that nonsense by the serious business of sending a group of oil drillers into outer space to save the Earth.

Steve Buscemi is great, and I'd happily pay to see him in almost any film, even if they're shown at places other than the Dustbin. (Some time ago my wife was quizzing me about some new "girl movie" I'd mentioned I'd seen advertised in the paper. "Who's playing the hunk love interest?" she asked. "Steve Buscemi," I deadpanned, and she did not believe me.) Liv Tyler is a much better romantic lead than Ben Affleck, whose affable lunkhead demeanor showcased in Good Will Hunting is apparently about the limit of his range. The thing is, Bruce Willis isn't a bad leading man, but the moronic dialogue and staging in this film made him look sometimes like an also-ran in a student film. On the other hand, I really don't ask much more from a summer action movie than Armageddon provides. Hero against Death, Hero wins. If one hero has to sacrifice himself, so much the better -- so long as there's another hero who lives on to whom I can then transfer my sympathies and walk out the door of the theater with an illusory sense of my own invulnerability, my faith in my own ingenuity to reach out and pre-empt whatever iceberg or meteor out there with whom I am destined to rendezvous.

Of course, the only thing that would have made Armageddon even better for me is if I had seen this film at the Dustbin, and for only a buck fifty, and better still, that when I can out of the film, glorying in my vicarious victory over death, I looked up to see mine was the winning ticket stub.

That would have been sweet.