Volcano

Some attempt is usually made to flesh out people in such films: a pinch of love or at least lust could have been fun between the leads Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche, but even that ploy went spluttering down the lava tube in Volcano when Anne Heche declared herself mid production to be a lesbian in real life! Now there's a disaster!

Mainstream audiences don't have a problem with the male protagonist being 20 years older than the female, as Tommy Lee Jones is to Anne Heche, but a bi-sexual woman having it off with any age of bloke is probably a bit prickly, especially in a film like Volcano, which is after all so doggedly adherent to middle class, middle morality, mass market psychological rules.

All of that wouldn't matter much if the special effects were awesome enough, (note the success of Jurassic Park with it's cast of ridiculously two dimensional humans and magnificently three dimensional dinosaurs).

But again Volcano doesn't achieve the special effects, "Oh Wow!" quality it needed in the face of what we've become used to these days.

The central idea is pretty terrific: a volcano erupts and forms an eruption cone in downtown Los Angeles in the La Brea Tar Pits, causing lava to flow through the city, but somehow that doesn't seem to be enough.

That could be because of the Steve McQueen factor, which contrives to spoil the tension of the film at an important moment.

Many years ago Steve McQueen became famous in a memorable disaster movie called Towering Inferno for saving everyone, again and again, from being incinerated in a burning fire skyscraper.

He was the Fire Chief, the general, and would have been expected to have led his men from the rear, but in he went, and in he went, and in he went. It became funny.

Tommy Lee Jones, who has the equivalent role in Volcano to McQueen's in Towering Inferno, doesn't quite do a Steve McQueen, but still does cross that McQueen boundary briefly towards the end of the film.

Jones bouncing around on a jack hammer helping out the troops, just has to raise a smile, and you're not supposed to smile like that in a disaster film.

Tommy Lee Jones is OK as the chief sweater, shouter and worrier, the attributes most needed in such films. Anne Heche goes through the motions well enough and young Gaby Hoffman gives another strong performance as the disaster chief's daughter, but there is absolutely no encouragement for the audience to really get involved in Volcano.

There were plenty of opportunities for the film makers to really grab the attention of the audience, by for example having young Gaby cook, but sadly that sort of thing doesn't fit the formula they think the public will pay to see.