Erupción volcánica

We tuned in to this movie to waste time before bed - it looked like a fun way to kill some time. It has Xander Berkeley and George Sheffey both whom are known character actors to give it some cachet, along with the female actor that was in a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger movie (Amy Jo Johnson). It also has a Dr. Evil character. We were not disappointed - it really is funny and ridiculous and a goodtime-waster. The characters are cliche and the CGI is terrible but then it is a b-movie so those elements are to be expected. I guess we'll never know how it turned out since its time for bed now. I recommend that this movie be be viewed with good humor.

A lame disaster movie with amateurish special effects, Magma: Volcanic Disaster is another lame feature length entry from the Sci-Fi Channel. In a nutshell: A maverick scientist struggles against the usual obstacles in a race against time to save the earth from cataclysm.

The special effects are glaringly awful, with lava and smoke effects that could have been produced by any sophomore at a first rate tech university. Even the soundtrack sounds like it was lifted from a dozen other disaster movies.

The only saving grace of this film is the acting, led by a solid performance from character actor Xander Berkeley. Be forewarned, though, if you're watching this film solely for Reiko Aylesworth, she appears in all of ten minutes of it, and looks rather bored to be there.

The movie does not start well. The writing, acting and sound are all about as bad as it gets, suggesting the entire movie may end up being a disaster. Not true. But the long-dormant Iceland volcano with an unpronounceable name starting with "Troll" does erupt suddenly and quickly, with terrible consequences for the people we didn't likely enjoy watching.

This is on the level of a TV-movie, but not as much of a disaster as some disaster movies. The actors playing Peter and Bree are actually pretty good, once Bree is no longer perky (or perhaps you can count her perky behavior as good acting). Bree is too perky and enthusiastic to be believable as an intelligent scientist, but that will change later.

The writing is about on the same level as the typical movie of this type, but the last half-hour or so is quite exciting. Some actors with only a few lines seem like they are sitting around the table reading their lines for the first time.

The President of the United States is no Kiefer Sutherland, but he does a good job.

The visual effects are competently done but not spectacular. In most scenes we see only the minimum necessary to communicate what is happening, but toward the end we get a little more detail. Violence is not graphic (unless you count people catching on fire, but even then you can't really see anything) but several people surely die. In one case we are told the person died.

This isn't bad enough to be good, but it's good enough not to be bad.

Yet another example of a made-for-cable film that started with a workable premise and a couple of really good actors, but managed to screw it all up. Low budget isn't always a bad thing, but somehow the biggest deficit here is in the imagination column. Absurd situations, ridiculous plot oversights and contradictions, supporting actors who just recite lines, and awkward dialogue make this painful to watch. When you find yourself awake and channel-surfing at 3AM, if you happen across this, go ahead and take a look, but don't go out of your way to find it otherwise. Honestly, the Sci-fi channel has talented people at its disposal, couldn't they have managed one more script treatment before production started? At least buy the poor writer a thesaurus and a geology textbook!

Well, this isn't the worst Sci-Fi Channel Original Production that I've seen, but it may just be the most boring. We start with a college professor and a few students going to explore a volcano in Iceland. Of course the volcano erupts, and they barely escape with their lives. Turns out the professor knows some genius who has worked out a theory of how all the world's volcanoes will start erupting, and we see the scenario played out via the usual cheap looking computer generated special effects. Loads and loads of cheap looking computer generated effects. Toss in the stupendously clichéd government bureaucrats who don't take the threat seriously, some utter nonsense about how humans have caused the Earth's core to expand, and a breathtakingly dull subplot concerning the professor's ex wife, and that about wraps it up. Oh wait, I almost forgot the environmentalist speech at the end, where we're supposed to learn from our mistakes...and some other stuff. Sorry, I'm afraid I nodded off there for a minute. I'm sleepy after sitting through this thing.

Overall, you've got a pile of characters we couldn't care less about, a plot that's identical to a dozen other really crappy disaster movies, a script that sometimes sounds as if it was written by someone who wasn't a native English speaker, and there you have it.

These film makers really need to hire a consultant to at least give them enough technical insight into their subject matter so that it doesn't make the average layman laugh at the absurdity of it.

Edit: Kind of funny, I apparently wrote this review on January 26, and here it is February 6, and I can't remember ever having seen this movie.