Volcano

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Year:	1997
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Mick Jackson
Genre:	L.A.va
Starring:	Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann, Don Cheadle
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120461/
Tagline:	The Coast Is Toast
Favourite line:	"Paracutin... 1943, a Mexican farmer sees smoke coming out of the middle of his cornfield. A week later there's a volcano a thousand feet high. There's no history of anything until it happens. Then there is."

Sometimes I get really depressed when I read comments made by the general public about movies.
I'm not talking about movie critics here, I'm on about the normal nobody bods such as myself who have a passion for movies and feel the almost unnatural urge to spout their views about them, as if anybody actually gives a shit. I'm in their demograph yet sometimes I feel as if I know them not at all.
The reason for my griping?
Reading endless comments about how this movie was just about the 'special effects' or just about the melodrama, or there was too much focus on the human side of the tragedy unfolding on screen.
What do these fucknuts expect?
It's a disaster movie. That's what happens in disaster movies. It's like choosing to watch a martial arts flick and bleating about the men being too rough, or watching a porno and complaining about the nudity. It goes with the territory.
*and relax*

Well, here we have Tommy Lee Jones leading the battle to spare as many lives as possible when a natural catastrophe strikes Los Angeles in the form of a volcano erupting beneath MacArthur Park.

That's all you need to know.
Honest.
Cue the usual highly fraught scenes of women and children, the ubiquitous 'pet in peril', as well as a less than subtle racial take on things, as blacks and whites are compelled to join forces to do battle against a new, colour blind foe: lava.
It's preposterous.
Of course it is.
But it's held together by the two leads and the fact that broiling lava is always an impressive visual spectacle. In truth, this is a 3 out of 5 rating, but the very presence of Tommy Lee Jones elevates it by one point. Seriously, he could tell me that I had cancer in every part of my body and I would still be entertained and more than a little aroused.
A disaster flick for the 90's, then, and more than adequate at that.