A great big rock hits the earth; and lots of people die. That's pretty much all there is to it; and most of that was in the trailer. Can a major Hollywood movie really squeak by with such a slender excuse for a premise? The old disaster-movie king; cheese-meister Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure; Earthquake); would have made a kitsch classic out of this; with Charlton Heston; rather than a resigned and mumbly Robert Duvall; as the veteran astronaut who risks several lives trying to blow up the comet that's headed right this way! As stiffly directed by Mimi Leder; this thick slice of ham errs on the side of solemnity. It may the be most earnest end-of-the-world picture since Stanley Kramer's atomic-doom drama On the Beach. There are a couple of classic melodramatic flourishes: an estranged father and daughter who share a tearful reconciliation as a Godzilla-sized tidal wave looms on the horizon; and an astronaut; communicating on video with his loved ones back on Earth; who follows whispered instructions from a buddy lurking just off camera--so that his little boy won't realize that he's been struck blind. With Morgan Freeman as the president of the United States. --David Chute