VOLCANO: FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN (1997) ** How can anyone watch a film like this and not desperately want to be a volcanologist? Love in the magma. Geysers of Lust and the Search for the Lost Telemetry. Anyway, think of all the cool things that a brave and arrogant young volcanologist can do: deputize himself a member of the ski patrol, design exploding models utilizing jelly doughnuts and, best of all, stick his head into the mouth of a volcano in order to gather empirical evidence regarding the status of its dormancy. That he does so despite the fact that it's already erupted is only evidence of how thorough a top volcanologist must be. Right away, at the beginning, when the mustachioed newlywed couple (no, hetero) eat it, you know that you're in for a wild ride. That the "plot" quickly reveals itself as Jaws with a volcano substituted for the shark is of little concern until things temporarily quit erupting, and the writers settle down to investigating the soap opera characters that they've, presumably as a joke, created. It helps that they do a bad job: the L.A. bimbo trophy wife, for instance, is apparently unhappy when the venture capitalist (how sad that they couldn't afford George Hamilton for the role) is crushed by a chandelier and she thereby inherits millions. I mean, the writers have presumably been to Hollywood, no? There's a cop named Buck. Colin Cunningham should be in every single movie of this ilk-anyone who makes one without a speaking role for him is an idiot. He is to bad dialogue what Robert Redford is to pompous heroes of historic and stereotypical self-importance. But who needs to trifle with such speculative and illusory stereotypes when the real world beckons with such unbridled possibility and grandeur. Drop what you're doing right this second and begin applying yourself for the only task that is truely the test of spectacular synapse transversement and exponential testosterone levels, sleep not until you can look yourself in the mirror and say, with any degree of accuracy at all: "I, Volcanologist."
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