Volcano (1997) Review: The Better 1997 Volcano Movie

The Slept-On Cinema Case

The hosts start with the scores and can't make them add up. A disaster movie is exactly the kind of film where you'd expect audiences to be kinder than critics, and here it's flipped. Grobe's theory: burnout. Two volcano movies in one spring, and the second one paid for it. Stan's counter is that nobody should be burnt out on volcano movies and Hollywood should make five a year.

What holds up is the craft and the cast. Tommy Lee Jones barks orders like it's The Fugitive with lava, and the hosts say that alone is worth the ticket. Don Cheadle, in a small role, plays like a fully formed movie star, lollipop in mouth, stealing scenes from a legend. Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann, Michael Rooker, and a run of "he's in this?" character actors fill out what Grobe calls one of the best casts the show has covered. And it's an LA movie through and through: Randy's Donuts, the La Brea Tar Pits, Angelyne's billboard, and Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." over the credits.

The first pick

Grobe takes the subway scene first overall: Stan Olber (John Carroll Lynch) jumping into the lava to throw a stranger to safety and melting from the feet up. Grobe calls it "the most heroic, selfless, and unbelievable scene I've ever seen in my entire life." Stan's first pick is Tommy Lee Jones barking orders, which he'd happily watch in any movie.

Also drafted: the entire supporting cast, Don Cheadle specifically, the silver exploration suits (so good someone steals one mid-grief), K-rails as a plot device, the maps that layer over other maps, the Hard Rock Cafe cameo, and the Randy Newman ending.

BOLOs

• A foreboding pan down the Fox logo, typed-out opening text, and a 976 advertisement.
• The morning news, LA people being casual about earthquakes, and a truly great gum shelf.
• Nicorette, an obviously worn nicotine patch, and a Kangol.
• Susie Essman, Bunny Colvin from The Wire, and Don Cheadle arriving like LeBron in eighth grade.
• A firefighter ejected from a truck, rock-paper-scissors-lava, business cards, and some of the best slow-motion in the show's history.

Worth watching?

Yes, and pick it over Dante's Peak if you only have one night. The hosts' caveat is the heavy-handed race-relations subplot near the end, which Grobe calls "the Sneetches ending" and both agree the movie didn't need. Their one change to make it a blockbuster: cut that, and give Norman Calder, the real estate developer set up as the villain all movie, the horrible lava death he was clearly owed. Favorite volcano effect, unanimously: the lava bombs. Drink to pair: the Lava Flow, a real two-blender cocktail of strawberry-rum slush swirled into coconut-rum-pineapple slush.

Production observation

Released April 25, 1997, Volcano opened number one and knocked off Anaconda, another Slept-On Cinema alum. It took $14.5 million opening weekend, $49 million domestic, and $123 million worldwide on a $90 million budget. The hosts also flag the film's real-world cousin: Parícutin, the Mexican volcano that appeared in a farmer's cornfield in 1943 and stood 1,400 feet tall within a decade. As Grobe says, the movie "could've said based on a true story." Spin-off pitches: put Cheadle in charge when California breaks off into the ocean, or merge both 1997 movies into Dante's Volcano and end the confusion forever.

Keep the movie night going

• Dante's Peak for the other half of the 1997 volcano double feature.
• Anaconda for the movie Volcano dethroned at the box office.
• Underrated 90s Action Movies for more of the era's overlooked spectacle.
• The Qualification List for every movie the show has defended.