What’s a “good-bad” movie? It’s the kind of flick that might have you cackling, hollering or groaning, one that is not necessarily great cinema but is great fun. It’s highly watchable even though — or maybe because — it’s memorably ridiculous. And it always has at least one element that pushes it into absurd territory.
Watching Tommy Lee Jones gruffly rant about a city’s perimeters as he scrawls across large maps while barking orders at subordinates during emergencies was a very particular cornerstone of 1990s moviegoing.
Like in the 1993 thriller “The Fugitive,” he delivers maximum Jones energy while stomping through underground tunnels in “Volcano,” the 1997 disaster film from the director Mick Jackson.
His character, Mike Roark, L.A.’s director of emergency services, is trying to be a better dad to his 13-year-old daughter (a pitch-perfect Gaby Hoffmann) when he gets handed the disaster of a lifetime.
It was not only a peak year for Jones — who also displayed his signature, no-nonsense demeanor in the blockbuster “Men in Black” — but also for his “Volcano” co-star, Anne Heche, who plays the radiant seismologist Dr. Amy Barnes. Heche starred in several 1997 films, including the critical darlings “Donnie Brasco” and “Wag the Dog.”
“Volcano” — not to be confused with its twin film “Dante’s Peak,” the other 1997 volcano movie, starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton — opens on a typical day in sunny Los Angeles complete with Rollerbladers, beach chairs and taco trucks. But little do its inhabitants realize that below their feet is a river of lava rushing throughout L.A.’s subway tunnels, soon to blow by way of the La Brea Tar Pits.
In her review at the time, Janet Maslin asked the right question: “Can an apocalyptic nightmare really pass for escapist fun?” The answer, crystallized over many disaster movies in the decades since, is a resounding yes. Here’s how “Volcano” exemplifies that intersection.
What Makes It Good?
Special Effects and Star Power
The thing about “Volcano” is that its plot is kind of boring. It centers on city departments relentlessly butting heads before coming together to execute major construction projects in order to save the day.
But Jones, Heche, Hoffmann and Don Cheadle — as Roark’s ultra-chill and quippy assistant director (definitely too chill to be in the emergency biz) — infuse the material with charisma. Watching top-tier performers commit this hard to an outrageous premise is always extra delicious.
Further, its lavish special effects — “every imaginable volcano-related effect this side of the lava lamp,” as Maslin put it — provide nonstop mayhem and many are still thrilling.
What Makes It Bad?
‘Anvilicious’ Social Commentary
If you dabble in online fandoms, you may be familiar with the term “anvilicious,” meaning a work of fiction that is heavy-handed, tactless, even sanctimonious in trying to deliver a message — i.e. it hits you over the head like an anvil.
Enter “Volcano,” which didn’t need to manufacture a subplot about racial tension in Los Angeles, but boy, did it ever, taking its chance to superficially riff on the O.J. Simpson and Rodney King cases.
A story arc about a white officer, Terry (James MacDonald), trying to intimidate a Black resident, Kevin (Marcello Thedford), is particularly cringe-y. There’s a reference to Mark Fuhrman, and at one point, Kevin calls himself the “volcano version of Rodney King.”
It all culminates when a young white boy, who is being carried out of the rubble by a Black man into a crowd of people all covered in ash, says: “Look at their faces. They all look the same.” Oof.
What Makes It Good-Bad?
Floor Is Lava!
The first indiction that “Volcano” is skewing toward parody despite its best efforts comes less than 10 minutes in. A maintenance worker, engulfed by noxious yellow steam, is pulled from a manhole. When asked about his workmates, he hisses: “They’re burned up — hottttttttt.”
From there, sincere moments inadvertently turn into comedy at every turn. First, the lava flow growls like an animal.
Then there’s the fact that the main cast is far more heat resistant than everyone else — barely coughing, barely sweating, barely an irritated eye amid torrential ash and lethal heat. When Roark and Amy hang from a fire ladder just feet above a bubbling lake of fire, they’re not baked alive. They simply suffer from hot shoes before being swung around to nearby pavement unfazed.
But there’s no topping one scene that has come to epitomize the accidental brilliance of “Volcano”: When Stan (John Carroll Lynch), the city’s M.T.A. chairman, leaps into the lava in order to heave a subway driver to safety before melting before our eyes like the Terminator at the end of “T2.” Only here, we don’t get a thumbs up as he fully dissolves into the sizzling pool.
Maya Salam is an editor and reporter, focusing primarily on pop culture across genres.
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