Critic Reviews

Deft filmmaking that allows the special effects to help, not be, the story combines with an actual script to make Volcano a smart, self-aware, and most of all fun disaster movie.

But a great sense of pace is a wonderful thing, and director Jackson and his crew (who made good use of hand-held and Steadicam shots and reportedly averaged an impressive 30 to 40 camera setups a day) move so quickly from shot to shot and location to location that viewers have a limited time to dwell on the film's predictable implausibilities.

In fact, this is one of the best pure disaster movies ever made (not that it has much competition). Congratulations to director Mick Jackson for a job well done.

Watching this film is a little bit like getting mauled and tickled at the same time. The filmmakers have given the whole shebang a hefty levity, and that's not easy to accomplish in a full-scale disaster movie.

The secret of Volcano's success as a better-than-average disasterama is its nonstop pace.

A furiously paced popcorn picture whose outrageous implausibility is somewhat amusing, Volcano delivers enough spectacular action to get it off to a hot B.O. start, although like the lava in the picture, it may not flow quite as far as anticipated.

I had a pretty good time at Volcano. The reason I didn't have a better time is that the characters aren't just schlocky, they're boring.

Unfortunately, Volcano is also faithful to Hollywood's legendary lack of originality.

In Volcano, the thrills are so well wrought that they eventually lose their novelty and become numbing.

But for anyone willing to swallow a large pinch of salt there is much to enjoy in the film's numerous nail-munching, white-knuckle set-pieces variously employing firetruck ladders, subway trains and a finale so ridiculous that it just... might... work.