Practicalmadness

FX is playing the 1997 movie Volcano, the thrilling story of a city under siege...oh, fuck it: it's a disaster movie about a volcano popping up in the middle of Los Angeles, and the chaos that ensues. It's total B-movie cheese, with Tommy Lee Jones and a cute, pre-coming out Anne Heche as The Only People Who Can Stop It.

Our first sign that the script doctors had a field day with this one:

(Two guards are moving paintings out of a museum that's about to be consumed by a lava flow.)
1st. Guard: Man, this Hieronymus Bosch is heavy!
2nd. Guard: That's because he deals with man's inclination towards sin, in defiance of God's will.
1st. Guard: I didn't mean it like that.

I saw this three or four times in theaters -- its only competition was Star Wars: The Version In Which Han Shoots In Self-Defense -- and I'd forgotten just how bad this movie was without seeming particularly inept. It's as if the filmmakers kept telling themselves, "it's okay if the best dialogue we can come up with for this scene is 'Look, (Character Name), I know you're scared. But I need you to...' It's a freakin' volcano movie."

Meanwhile, millions were spent on CGI shots of flowing lava that is so hot that it can destroy a subway train from ten feet away, but not hot enough to so much as singe a dog from seven inches away. Clearly the lava is meant to represent the inexorable destruction of logic and reason of which Los Angeles is the epicenter.

How else could a guy jump into it, still be alive and in one piece such as to throw the man he's carrying to safety (distance from lava: nine inches) and then slowly, steadily sink as little rings of fire burn up the legs of his jeans?

'Jump, Stan! You can make it! Oops, uh, aw, damn, I guess you can't...umm...uh, dammit, Stan, we tol' you to get yo' ass on a fuckin' Stairmaster!'

Stan's reply: "AAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!"

As I recall, the first act (which has just culminated in the eruption of the La Brea Tar Pits, the uniting of heroes Jones and Heche against the Fiery Terror and the arrest of a token, non-star black guy by a caricature of a racist LAPD cop) leads to the second, in which the lava flow changes direction and the hero's daughter is Not Out Of Danger After All.

This leads to the grand finale, in which some stuff happens and the leads come together as One Big Happy Family. This is an agreeable alternative to the Male And Female Lead Get It On Ending, as Tommy Lee Jones's involvement renders that ending a little bit, well, gross.

There is a legend of Stanley Kubrick where the master goes to see every film playing in New York City and decides that there's no way that he couldn't do better. Watching Volcano makes me think that a brain-damaged four-year-old couldn't manage to come up with something more filmically correct than this.