Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters (Universal Pictures)

The good thing about Twisters is you don’t need any prior knowledge of Twister to enjoy its sequel. The movie is an entertaining crowd-pleaser of a disaster flick, maintaining the original film’s spirit while expanding its state-of-the-art special effects. Yet Twisters also wants to have it both ways, replicating the goofy vibe of 1990s disaster films while framing its enhanced destruction as a meditation on climate change spiraling out of control. That balance never quite locates its footing, even if the spectacle warrants big-screen viewing.

As the second highest-grossing movie of 1996, Twister was an early promoter of epic CGI spectacle, mixing groundbreaking special effects with a divorce/marriage drama as chaotic as the film’s titular disasters. Twisters certainly juggles better effects with a story that wouldn’t feel out of place in a mid-budget character drama. That understanding of the terrain comes courtesy of director Lee Isaac Chung, who not only grew up close to the original film’s Oklahoma setting in Arkansas, but used the state to film his Oscar-winning drama Minari.

Replacing Helen Hunt’s Jo Harding is Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), an aspiring storm chaser hoping to secure a grant for her anti-tornado project, developed alongside her boyfriend Jeb (Daryl McCormack) and fellow weather enthusiasts like computer man Ravi (Anthony Ramos). But the experiment—using one of Twister’s Dorothy capsules to launch a disruptive mixture into a tornado, theoretically disrupting it—doesn’t go according to plan. The tragedy that follows convinces Kate to put storm-chasing behind her.

Five years later, that plan is disrupted when Ravi shows up in Manhattan, asking Kate to help him test out a new military-grade tornado scanning system sponsored by his well-funded and heavily doctorated Storm Par team. This means returning to Oklahoma and facing the storms once again. Not to mention finding competition in Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), a cowboy hat-wearing YouTube celebrity and self-described “tornado wrangler” who barrels into town to document the tornados (and occasionally shoot rockets into them). Tyler quickly takes a liking to Kate—much to Ravi’s chagrin, given his own romantic feelings—leading to multiple tense encounters on the road. But, as the storms worsen, circumstances will inevitably force them to partner up in order to protect lives.

Outside the storms, the closest Twisters provides to a physical adversary is a subplot about the Ravi’s Storm Par donor and his field partner, Scott (David Corenswet), monetizing tornado data for shady purposes. Yet it never comes off as that important a threat, especially when Twisters spends so much time endearing you to its ensemble cast. Even Tyler’s shit-eating smirk belays a gentler soul than his social media profile suggests. The role is another slam dunk for Powell following Hit Man, to the point that Edgar-Jones, whose arc is way more conventional, risks being overshadowed by his charisma. Still, their chemistry grows over time.

Chung’s eye for nature is certainly on display here, filling Twisters with sweeping shots of rural fields and towns living in a contentious relationship with the storms, almost biblical in their destructive power. Of course, the twisters grow so massive and frequent that they teeter on supernaturally cartoonish, amplified by Kate’s almost extrasensory awareness of weather patterns and which tornados are the best to document. That silliness was key to the original film’s appeal, but Twisters regularly goes back and forth on whether it’s all out silly or trying to say something meaningful about climate change. Not enough to hurt the storytelling, but just enough to leave its overall statement a bit vague.

Still, when Twisters wants to give you tornado thrills and scares, it delivers. There’s an epic sensation to be had watching a storm cloud spiral to the ground and sweep everything away, especially with cars driving up to the edge of its winds (and sometimes straight through). The tornadoes also have scale and variety, like as a surprise invasion at a rodeo. While the temptation to link Twisters to its predecessor might be strong—the late Bill Paxton’s son James makes a quick cameo midway through—Chung thankfully restrains himself. The movie stands on its own vortex, and that’s a pleasant surprise.

Twisters isn’t going to reinvent the summer blockbuster wheel, or even blow it away. But it has that blockbuster charm and a likable cast. Sometimes that’s all you need to make surviving and/or taming a tornado a good time at the movies.