Ah, he turned it off before the end. It was just reaching the crescendo, as well. Tracy (Julia Stiles) likes that bit of the 1812 Overture, in fact if a piece of music is arriving at its climactic moment, she is wont to stay and listen to it until it's finished rather than turning it off, call it a quirk, but her new date Glen (David Cross) says it never bothers him and when he turns the car radio back on the music has finished. Never mind, Tracy says, they have the brunch to think about and they climb out of the vehicle and proceed to the front door of her friend Emma (Erinn Hayes), who is holding one of her famed (among their coterie of pals) meals which now has to be vegan to please Lexi (Rachel Boston) who has recently become one. It should be the biggest issue...
But there's a bigger problem that will soon hit the party of eight, and it begins to make itself plain when they cannot get any reception on their phones, and then the internet is down, and the television isn't working on any of the stations. So what's up? It's all there in the title, yet this lot are so self-absorbed they manage to fit any mishaps that may befall them into the sphere of their experience by making it all about themselves, so even when it appears as if World War III has broken out, it becomes less a global concern and more whether it will affect their relationships. This could be a canny take on how modern folks in the West regard themselves as the centre of the universe, or it could simply be an excuse for jokes at their expense.
At first we think Glen, the poor, innocent lamb caught up in this dinner party of people he does not know and now cannot get away from, is the only reasonable person there as he is put into awkward situations conscious that he doesn't wish to tread on any toes, but as the crisis deepens wants to take some form of control that the others are too solipsist to wish to do anything about. Cross, by this stage a comedy veteran, surprisingly played straightman to the antics of the rest of the cast, and proved he could handle the squarer characters just as well as he could the more wacky creations he made his name with, but this was an ensemble movie we were dealing with, and director Todd Berger was careful to offer each of the main cast something of value.
So when the neighbour (a Berger cameo) shows up at the door to ask them if they have any batteries for his torch while dressed in a protective suit, the guests finally twig that large bombs have gone off downtown and it's only a matter of time before the fallout - which chemistry teacher Hedy (America Ferrera) identifies as including nerve gas - reaches them. They seal the windows and doors and anywhere the gas could enter, and prepare for the end by selfishly obsessing over their own worries: not about their impending doom, as might have happened in a more conventional end of the world scenario, but basically who is having an affair with whom, who is breaking up, and who is sticking together, all in the three hours they have left before a horrible fate awaits.
With a minimum of special effects other than the odd warplane seen in the distance or the sound of police sirens, It's a Disaster was patently a low budget enterprise, but the strength of Berger's writing and the self aware performances were what you would stay for. It was conceivable you would find them too insufferable to wish to hang around with for ninety minutes, but since we were meant to be laughing at them as well as judging how well we would approach such a dilemma ourselves, there was enough good humour included that even in the more dramatic moments you went along with your curiosity about how they would face their inevitable demise. It was by no means a laugh riot as there were lulls, ebbs and flows in the plot, but it was building to a punchline that was both true to the personalities involved and hilarious at the same time. Don't go thinking you could skip to the last couple of minutes to see what the joke was, you really needed to spend time with these people to understand why it was so funny, and perhaps something to relate to with a wince.
