To quibble over the degree of reality in a movie about a volcanic eruption on Wilshire Boulevard is simply and pointlessly to attempt to fix the exact percentage to which the premise belongs to science fiction. No matter what, the number will be in the high nineties. Better just to accept the advancing tide of lava as a distant cousin to the unearthly menaces of The Blob and X -- The Unknown, the former from outer space, the latter from under ground. "This," to nail down the family resemblance in a single line, "is going to destroy everything in its path." The ensuing disaster is moderately enjoyable, especially for its strong undercurrent of Angeleno self-loathing. (The post-Rodney King riots of 1992 are an implicit point of reference: the spectacle of burning and looting; the overzealous racist cop; the can-we-all-get-along moral lesson, out of the mouth of a babe.) It could have been more than just moderately enjoyable, though, if not for some filmmaking traits that are so much a part of Angeleno loathsomeness: the greedy hero-centeredness of the action (doesn't a catastrophe on this scale demand a more democratic distribution of heroics?); the overload of special effects; the brutally, bullyingly loud soundtrack; and the go-go-go pacing. The last-mentioned seems especially egregious when, at the end of the barely ninety-minute running time, the viewer is left to wonder what was the big rush. Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann, Don Cheadle, John Carroll Lynch; directed by Mick Jackson. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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