This movie has a lot of problems. Bad acting, boring characters, impossible situations and it's hard to take the movie seriously when the characters do so many stupid things.
A guy who melts from his feet up to his head without toppling over in the lava. Tommy Lee Jones and the woman's shoes are smoking from the heat of the lava beneath them, yet the shoes themselves seems to not remain hot after they are dropped on solid ground. Seismologists who thinks it's a brilliant idea to go alone at 4 AM to investigate a place where several workers have boiled to death from heat. One of said seismologists who thinks it's smart to sit right above a crack in the ground where the steam has come from. Blowing up a huge building in 20 minutes. Apparently blocks of concrete in shape of a horseshoe will stop the lava from flowing around the edges of it?
It's as if the movie expects me to be stupid enough to believe all of that works and it's quite creepy. In a sense, I have to become more dumb to enjoy the movie.
Kelly (Tommy Lee Jones characters daughter in the movie) is the reason why I lowered the stars from 3 to 2. Gaby Hoffmann is 15, but her character talks and behaves like she is 10. The character also appears extremely awkward, needing a babysitter and apparently doesn't have a single friend in this movie. She is clingy, spoiled and can't do anything without the input of others. Not even rescuing herself when lava is threatening to kill her. Nope, she stands there shouting for her father to run to the car, pick her up and he actually has to carry her all the way to a doctor because... well... would you expect her to be able to do it herself? Sure she had a small second degree burn on her thigh, but at the hospital, she walks perfectly fine and you even see her running less than an hour later.
I also found the movie stupid as it claimed several hundreds had died in this incident, yet it seemed you had to be a complete and utter moron to be able to die at all. Were those people really more stupid than Kelly? The only logical death in the movie was the firefighter trapped in the firetruck and one of the few characters I actually felt sorry for.
In conclusion, the movie is very stupid, but because it has a good pace and lots of things going at all times, there isn't a moment when you can take a nap since you'd miss out. It's too bad that all you get to see for more than half of the movie is stupidity.
A guy who melts from his feet up to his head without toppling over in the lava. Tommy Lee Jones and the woman's shoes are smoking from the heat of the lava beneath them, yet the shoes themselves seems to not remain hot after they are dropped on solid ground. Seismologists who thinks it's a brilliant idea to go alone at 4 AM to investigate a place where several workers have boiled to death from heat. One of said seismologists who thinks it's smart to sit right above a crack in the ground where the steam has come from. Blowing up a huge building in 20 minutes. Apparently blocks of concrete in shape of a horseshoe will stop the lava from flowing around the edges of it?
It's as if the movie expects me to be stupid enough to believe all of that works and it's quite creepy. In a sense, I have to become more dumb to enjoy the movie.
Kelly (Tommy Lee Jones characters daughter in the movie) is the reason why I lowered the stars from 3 to 2. Gaby Hoffmann is 15, but her character talks and behaves like she is 10. The character also appears extremely awkward, needing a babysitter and apparently doesn't have a single friend in this movie. She is clingy, spoiled and can't do anything without the input of others. Not even rescuing herself when lava is threatening to kill her. Nope, she stands there shouting for her father to run to the car, pick her up and he actually has to carry her all the way to a doctor because... well... would you expect her to be able to do it herself? Sure she had a small second degree burn on her thigh, but at the hospital, she walks perfectly fine and you even see her running less than an hour later.
I also found the movie stupid as it claimed several hundreds had died in this incident, yet it seemed you had to be a complete and utter moron to be able to die at all. Were those people really more stupid than Kelly? The only logical death in the movie was the firefighter trapped in the firetruck and one of the few characters I actually felt sorry for.
In conclusion, the movie is very stupid, but because it has a good pace and lots of things going at all times, there isn't a moment when you can take a nap since you'd miss out. It's too bad that all you get to see for more than half of the movie is stupidity.