`DEEP IMPACT' FALLS SHORT ON BANG FOR THE BUCK.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Some say the world will end in fire. ``Deep Impact'' suggests that we'll all more likely be bored to death.

How any movie about planetary destruction, with a cast and behind-the-scenes talent roster like this one boasts, can turn out so tedious and uninvolving is one of those mysteries it would take a team of NASA scientists to solve.

The basic idea here - to look at the personal, um, impact an impending, catastrophic comet strike has on several diverse lives - is an honorable one. After all, disaster movies don't necessarily have to just be about spectacular devastation. The script is credited to ``Ghost's'' Bruce Joel Rubin and ``The Player's'' Michael Tolkin, and ``ER'' executive producer John Wells did a polish, so among them it should possess a high degree of human interest.

But if you're going to take the character route, you have to put some compelling characters into it. What we have here instead are the most cardboard constructions - ambitious TV newswoman, teen-age lovers just discovering life, paternalistic president, self-sacrificing astronauts. And by keeping the action ploddingly centered on these generic lives, director Mimi Leder dissipates whatever energy the movie could have possessed (and this woman knows from cinematic momentum; her last film was the breathlessly paced ``The Peacemaker'').

Not only do these people lack any but the most rudimentary individual traits, they don't do anything interesting. Whenever ``Deep Impact'' ambles near a dramatic idea - a government cover-up of the looming shebang, a socially divisive lottery to choose a few hundred thousand designated survivors - the scenario wimps out and grabs at quick, noble solutions. This is the best-behaved Armageddon that could possibly be imagined.

Tea Leoni is cable news reporter Jenny Lerner. With a hot tip that a cabinet member's resignation is because of someone named Ellie, she's out to break the next White House sex scandal. But surprise: Ellie isn't a smoking bimbo, it's an E.L.E. - Extinction Level Event.

Lerner is soon surrounded by Secret Service guys who drag her to a provisions-laden basement where President Beck (Morgan Freeman) asks her to keep quiet for a couple of days for the sake of, you know, the world.

A team of astronauts led by veteran Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall) is dispatched to plant a couple of nukes on the approaching comet and hopefully blow it off course.

Meanwhile, Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood), the teen-age astronomer who first spotted the fireball, wins a coveted spot in the underground survival complex. He quickly marries his girlfriend, Sarah (Leelee Sobieski), so she can be saved, too. But like Kate Winslet and that lifeboat, she refuses to get on the bus to safety for emotional but idiotic reasons. Of course, a drippy, romantic James Horner score backs up this and more bathetic hogwash.

In fact, the only thing that gets you through the first hour and 45 minutes of ``Deep Impact'' is ``Titanic'' expectations. You figure that, after putting you through so much witless character noninteraction, the filmmakers owe you some really great destruction.

But what you get is about five minutes' worth of New York City and some mountains getting hit by a tidal wave. It's hardly enough, despite the fact that it gets repetitive in even that short a time. And the New York footage looks just like ``Independence Day's,'' only wet instead of hot.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Deep Impact'' (PG-13; language, mild violence, children in jeopardy).

The stars: Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Mimi Leder. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown. Released by DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, one minute.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: One and One Half Stars.

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Photo

Photo: In ``Deep Impact,'' two astronauts, played by Alexander Baluev, left, and Jon Favreau, plant a detonating device on a comet headed toward Earth in an attempt to alter its deadly course.