About 30 years ago, eight-year-old Ryan Grantham (as "Little" April) and teenage sister Kristy Dinsmore (as "Little" Sean) are driving with their parents in Oklahoma during a terrible storm. A man foolishly stands on his truck and is struck down. They family stops and tries to save him, leading to even more tragedy… Presently, storm tracking professional Mimi Rogers (as "grown-up" April Saunders) specializes in the study of tornadoes and how to manage them safely. A single mom, Ms. Rogers has one daughter - pretty but bratty Elyse Levesque (as Dana). Ms. Levesque is rehearsing "Romeo and Juliet" at her high school when a storm hits, then blames her frantic mother for not arriving in time to provide comfort...

Somehow managing to refrain from slapping her ungrateful child, mother Rogers takes Levesque go to visit brother Robert Moloney (as "grown-up" Sean Saunders) in Seattle. Now a policeman, he lives with pregnant wife Tracy Trueman (as Molly). She's a good hostess. Rogers finds romance with local TV weatherman Andrew Airlie (as Travis Jones), an old college boyfriend. They have a secret. Levesque is attracted to new college boyfriend Ryan Kennedy (as Ryan Laswell), who likes his women willing and able - well, maybe not always willing. Naturally, a terrible "Storm Cell" threatens the entire cast...

This "Lifetime" TV-movie does not convince with the storm as a "monster" (complete with growling sound effects), which isn't used effectively with the surprise villain. You can see how it might have been better.

**** Storm Cell (3/19/08) Steven R. Monroe ~ Mimi Rogers, Elyse Levesque, Robert Moloney, Ryan Kennedy

I love disaster movies and this one is just that, a DISASTER! To be honest, its not all that bad if you're into b-rated movies. In this one the disasters i.e. tornadoes are really an afterthought. Its more about the drama. In summary, this liberal leaning movie is more about free spirited, high attitude kids and chics with no emotional control. Basically its a bad attempt as a drama cloaked in climate change. Watch it to kill time and to tick this one off of your apocalyptic movies list. Who knows, if you're into that type of stuff, you just may enjoy it.

STORM CELL is a bad disaster movie even by TV movie standards. It stars Mimi Rogers (THE X-FILES) as a dedicated storm chaser who must fight against time to save her family from a series of super-powerful twisters that threaten to wreck much of middle America, yet the film fails to build on that premise at any point.

Due to budgetary constraints, no doubt, this film ends up more as a family drama than a disaster flick. Much is made of Rogers' obnoxious and stuck-up teenage daughter who keeps getting herself into peril, to the degree that I was hoping Rogers would simply cut her losses and forget about the dumb kid; no such luck.

Meanwhile, a few scenes show a twister wreaking havoc on some homesteads with the aid of some dodgy CGI. The two plots never gel, there's no plan on the part of the heroes, they just sort of amble from place to place and survive mainly through luck. It's all very boring and uninteresting; I expected something cheesier, and more entertaining, from this genre, but it's almost laid back in it's approach. Watch out for the great Michael Ironside in a cameo role.