Genre Guesstimation – Dante’s Peak (1997)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s genre has been chosen by Barry of Cinematic Catharsis and we will be reviewing our favorite Nature Gone Berserk Movies.

Mother Nature usually takes care of us, with all the oxygen we can breathe, water we drink and cute bunnies we can pet, but what happens when she gets angry? Watch her unleash floods, earthquakes, volcanoes and animals gone mad.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Aug by sending them to berserkbarry@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice Barry!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Nature Gone Berserk Movies.…

“I’ve always been better at feeling out volcanoes than people and politics” – Harry Dalton

Number of Times Seen – 1 (4 Aug 2019)

Brief Synopsis – A volcano specialist is sent to a remote rural town percehd on the edge of a dormant volcano to try and determine whether the sleeping giant is about to awaken and wreck havoc on the town.

My Take on it – This is a film that I have avoided for over twenty years because it seemed to look quite silly at the time.

They succeed in keeping this film extremely cheesy along the way and that hurts things so much.

The fact that the two leads are well known action film superstars unfortunately doesn’t help make this movie any more thrilling or entertaining because it al comes across as being quite pathetic.

Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton have terrible chemistry together and most of their scenes together fail to work because it’s so hard to believe them in these roles.

The film have two young kids tagging along for the ride and too often along the way was I reminded of how much of a carbon copy this movie feels like of the great Jurassic Park (1993).

The pecial effects are a bit too campy and given the level of effects used at this time of the 90’s, it’s quite easy to see that they didn’t give it their all here.

Bottom Line – Really cheesy disaster movie that doesn’t work despite having two great action hero leads. Brosnan and Hamilton have terrible chemistry together and so many of their scenes together just don’t come across as believable at all. The addition of the two kids makes this feel more like a Jurassic Park (1993) carbon copy than it should. The special effects are ok, but given the level of effects used in the 90’s they didn’t really go all out here.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Pierce Brosnan said in a press interview shortly after the film’s release that he practiced shouting the line “It’s a pyroclastic cloud!” in front of a mirror for six days prior to shooting the scene. Brosnan stated “it is the movie’s key emotional scene, and I needed to get that enunciation just right. That’s acting.” (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not even close. This is a pretty poorly made disaster film that fails to be thrilling at all.

Rating – Razzie Worthy (4/10)