Perfection In Perfection

Following in the shadow of Amblin Entertainment features, which had broad audience appeal combined with a high concept, arrived Tremors, a Jaws on land monster movie.
And just like the Amblin flicks, its got imagination that doesn't exceed its budget, enough action to fill a mega-budget blockbuster, and a collection of weird and wonderful people you wanna spend an hour and a half with.

The cast are great. Kevin Bacon and (an always under-rated) Fred Ward are Val and Earl, a couple of bickering, best friend, modern day cowboys. Without their banter, the movie would sink a notch. With them is a great ensemble including Reba McIntire and Michael Gross as a couple of survival nuts.

The effects are flawless, back in the days when CGI was rarelky used. It relies on some amazing go-motion work plus some fine floor FX to bring the Graboids to life.

Not many movies can pull off monsters, action, humour and thrill, but Tremors does it with ease. The script is rock solid, chucking some excellent one-liners to Bacon "mother-humpers" and Ward "pardon my french".

There was a studio-system philosophy in the early '90's that less mega-budget should be made as greater rewards could be earnt from high quality medium budget films, of which Tremors is one. Surprisingly, in the midst of the current financial crisis, Hollywood studio's are intent on creating more expensive and dumber blockbusters (Wolverine / GI: Joe / G-Force). Perhaps someone ought to show a studio executive something like Tremors. It's a stretch, but they might like it...