After the so-dreadful-it's-entertaining Dante's Peak, surely this had to be better? But as Oscar Wilde (almost) wrote "To make one dreadful volcano movie is a misfortune; to make two smacks of carelessness". Yep, Volcano delivers all the same cliches as Dante, but the special effects are nowhere near as good. One feels that with a tag-line like 'The coast is toast', tongue should be firmly in cheek, but it just ain't funny enough, despite trying to take pot-shots at the very soft target of the media. Maybe having characters shout inaudible dialogue at each other passes for satire in Hollywood these days. Though Jones tries to bear up under it all, when the his supposed Emergency Co-ordinator has to have "magma" explained to him, you know the script is on the slippery slope towards rescued dogs and plucky kids (plus a stunningly squirm-inducing moral about race relations). Eventually, you can't even laugh at it any more, nor can a cameo appearance by the diner from Miracle Mile save it.
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