VOLCANO (1997) **1/2 Volcanos are cute, but they aren't pets. I had mixed feelings at first: I like my disaster movies incompetent and low-budget, with the actors struggling to pronunciate "telemetry" with any sense of familiarity. Instead the effects were great, and Tommy Lee Jones shouldered a script and execution that was making the tension rise like a real movie. Most cities really only need a single news program every week or so. Los Angeles needs five channels running simultaneously at all times, and this film begins to catch at that. Of course a little bit of air would go out of the thing whenever they went off onto some side tangent, trying to introduce us to uninteresting characters, but Tommy Lee and Don Cheadle kept the thing solidly on the heroism side of the hero/goofus dialectic. Fortunately, or not, a little past halfway through things just fall apart completely. The special effects turn into low dpi computer graphics, they let Anne Heche act frenetic way too much, they depict so much human tragedy that it turns into a comedic commentary on bad directing, and the script turns are so unrealistic (and I say this, having been beguiled into giving the concept of volcanic eruptions into downtown L.A. no small amount of credibility) that no actor could look anything but foolish in their employ.
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