Twister is a great movie to see on the big screen with a digital sound system. The effects are great and the sound is amazing. However, there's barely any plot and the acting is pretty bad.
The plot simply involves two sets of groups chasing tornadoes. One group is motivated by the scientific and existential challenge. The other is motivated by money. The former group, upon which most of the attention focuses on in this movie, is composed of Bill (Bill Paxton) and Jo Harding (Helen Hunt), and a bunch of sidekicks (many of whom are very familiar faces in cinema). Bill arrives to pick up divorce papers from Jo, but gets caught up in the excitement of chasing tornadoes. And who won't be? I've always loved storms and there's nothing better than going out there in the midst of nature's fury and defying the elements (even if it means a risk to life). That's exactly what they do in this movie: four times, each time with an increased risk. In the end of achieve their goal of gathering information about how tornadoes work, in order to increase the warning time before a tornado hits.
There are two subplots in addition to this. One involves a bit of romantic competition between Melissa (Jami Gertz) who's going to get married to Bill and Jo. The other involves competition between the two teams trying to uncover the secrets hidden in a twister. As I said before, the acting is barely tolerable, but besides the special effects what struck me most about this movie was the use of sound to breathe life into tornadoes. That is, the sound effects (and the dialogue) were such that it seemed as though the tornadoes were somehow alive and cogent.
The Deep Purple song they used in the soundtrack should've been Stormbringer instead of Child in Time. And the wings should've been Coke instead of Pepsi. According to some people, this movie is a total disgrace to meteorology.