Volcano (1997)

Please don't spend money on this.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Australian Free-to-air TV is in such a poor state that this movie was the best thing I could find tonight. This cliché-ridden piece seemed to have been written by 'my film student nephew' who 'has Final Draft on his computer' with the visual effects done by his mate who owns a pirated copy of After Effects. That's not to say that this film doesn't have its virtues. With a little extra modern day post-production this could be an excellent comedy instead of just an accidental one. Just have Mel Brooks tweak the script (not too much!), then CGI replace Tommy Lee Jones with Rick Moranis, give Anne Heche the voice of Joan Rivers and call it 'Lava Balls'.

Disaster movies have been popular ever since Clark Gable survived the 1906 earthquake in "San Francisco." Decades later, producer Irwin Allen raised the disaster-movie stakes with all-star casts that battled capsized ocean liners and burning high-rises. Unfortunately, Irwin Allen had no hand in "Volcano," and the stars featured are limited to Tommy Lee Jones and Don Cheadle, unless viewers consider Anne Heche a star. Jerome Armstrong and Billy Ray's nonsensical screenplay focuses on the destruction wrought in Los Angeles by the eruption of a newly formed volcano that rises from the La Brea Tar Pits.Director Mick Jackson keeps the action swirling to distract viewers from the implausible events taking place on screen. "Volcano" is one of those films in which characters have arguments or emotional interchanges while molten lava fast approaches, but apparently does not emit any heat, because the mindless chat continues. Of course, kids and dogs are spared, shattered glass falling from skyscrapers lands harmlessly on the lead actors, hair-breadth escapes abound, fire fighters have time to stand and cheer while buildings burn around them, and the initially antagonistic Jones and Heche form a mutual admiration society at fadeout. Jones and Cheadle must have appeared for the money, and both emerge relatively unscathed. Heche and Gaby Hoffman as Jones's daughter are best left unmentioned; the rest of the cast is best left in the embers.The essential key to a successful disaster movie is the quality of the special effects, and those in "Volcano" fail to get a passing grade. Fire, lava, explosions, falling glass may sound exciting, but, by the final credits, the film has become a reddish blur, and viewers have long lost interest in who survived and who did not; we never got to know any of them anyway. "Volcano" makes the earlier Los Angeles disaster flick, "Earthquake," seem like "Citizen Kane;" at least that 1974 entry had Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and George Kennedy leading the cast. "Volcano's" best moment is a fleeting glimpse of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith.

Volcano (1997) It's a good film, got some nice effects, action and drama but there's not a lot of science or thinking behind it. If you're looking for this sort of thing it's great but there is definitely better disaster movies out there.In addition, you're probably going to have to wait a while for it to get started but then after that it's literally lots and lots of lava/ fire even though it's still pretty average. It also has the potential of being so much better as the plots good and same goes for the characters.I personally thought it was an interesting film, and I wouldn't mind watching it again. I do recommend watching it.

This movie was pretty lame. I didn't lava it. In 1997's, the United States was welcome that year with two big budget volcano films. One was Dante's Peak, the other is this mess of a movie. Directed by Mick Jackson, the movie had a lot of things going against it. One thing is the horrible acting. Tommy Lee Jones seem to forget what movie, he is in; because he's channeling his inner Samuel Gerard from 1993's Fugitive with this role. Tommy Lee Jones plays Mike Roark, head of the Los Angeles Emergency Management Center whom with Dr. Amy Barnes, a volcanologist (Anne Heche) discover an actual volcano ready to emerges from the La Brea Tar Pits and destroy Los Angeles. It's up to Mike and his management team, including his second-in-command Emit Reese (Don Cheadle), to save as much people as possible. Too bad for Los Angeles, they put a guy in change for Emergency needs that has no clue, how Volcanos and earthquakes work. That's really smart. Serious, how does this guy, not know what lava and manga is!? The ignorance of geography is just annoying. Are we supposed to believe no one in LA has a clue what a volcanic eruption or lava looks like? Sure, the first time people might do double-take. However it soon gets to the point where the film seems to be set in an alternate reality where the very existence of volcanoes is an obscure geological fact completely unfamiliar to the general public. It's an insult. For a city as large as Los Angeles, the fictional and totally ridiculous volcano erupting un-noticing erupting is just out of the world, unrealistic. How does this volcano get unnoticing for years from every scientist in the world, over the years? Yes, California is a geologically complex place with many centers of volcanic activity, but most of them aren't anywhere near the Los Angeles Basin. So maybe, scientist weren't looking for it, but still Los Angeles area has no volcanoes active or even recently extinct. The LA basin is also full of oil wells and tar pits. Petroleum deposits cannot form geologically in the presence of volcanic activity anywhere in the vicinity; you can't have oil, tar, and volcanoes in the same place, period. It's nearly impossible to have volcanos such as a Parícutin type there. It's like me, saying that the volcano on the moons are all activate, when there clearly dead. Another thing that bugs me about the movie is Anne Heche. I really don't buy her as a scientist. She has to be one of the worst actress that came out from the 1990s. The movie even has the nerves, to set up a love plot between the 28 year old, Anne Heche and the 51 year, Tommy Lee Jones. Really? Do you think, that's needed for this ridiculous movie!? They have little to no chemistry. If that doesn't get you turn off, the movie adds more sub-plots like a doctor, Jaye Calder (Jacqueline Kim) choosing her job over her jerk husband who wants to flee the city. Why on earth, did the man marry her, if he's against her helping people? I would thought, the word 'Doctor', who give him, some clues, what she does for a living. The movie even wants to deal with racism. If there wasn't enough sub-plots in the movie, alright. There is a few scenes where a black guy and racist cop are fighting while the eruption and lava flow are going on. Only to connect with each other, when the disaster threaten their neighborhoods. In a better movie and director, this would be great social commentary, but in this film, it's deliver in such a cheesy and offending way. Even the boy last line in the end of the movie, sounds tacky. Another bad character is, Roark's daughter, Kelly (Gaby Hoffmann) who tend to freeze up constantly, forcing people to save her. Her clueless way to save herself, cost the chance of her hero trying to save someone else's life. Does she felt any empathy about that? No! The worst instance being losing a kid she was put in charge of and when she finds him on an exploding street, decides to stay there and wait to be saved. Her behavior is justified mention by an easily missed conversation between her mother and father early in the movie, but gees... she so tiresomely getting saved all the time to the point, that I wanted her to die in the film. There is also a lot patting scenes with characters that have little to do with the main plot. While, I do like the character of Stan Olber (John Carroll Lynch) and his last scene was pretty damn epic. There is little reason, why the movie needed him, around. The visual effects were alright in the most part. Still, there couldn't get the science between the lava, right. I like how the heroes place concrete barriers in a cul-de-sac so when the lava reaches them it'll dam itself, but they face it in the wrong direction for the dam to work. In real life dams and bridges need to have the arc against the point with the most pressure. There are too many instances to count where individuals are standing directly on the other side of concrete barriers redirecting and holding back lava. Most of them, with the ash they breathed in would have turned the insides of their lungs into pavement and killed them well before the final act. The movie was composed by Alan Silvestri. Too bad, it's not that good. Overall: The ads say The Coast Is Toast, but to be truth, the movie is toast. It's painful to watch.