DANTE'S PEAK
A film review by Steve Kong
Copyright 1997 Steve Kong
Lately there have been a string of special effects driven movies that are lacking in story and characters. And Dante's Peak is not unlike these movies.
If you've seen Twister, you'll know the basics for Dante's Peak. A scientist driven by a memory of a loved one lost to the "monster" of nature. In Twister the monster was the tornado, and the scientist was Helen Hunt's character Jo. In Dante's Peak, the monster is a volcano and the scientist is Pierce Brosnan's Harry.
But, is that all the coincidence between the two movies? No, Dante's Peak also has the rag-tag team of scientists, the red truck, the corny love story, and the opening scene showing how "the loved one" was lost.
You might me wondering how a 2 hour movie can be made out of one volcano blowing. I know I did. The movie starts with a bang (pun intended). But it quickly slows to a smoldering. The movie then spends the next hour building the antagonistic relationship between Harry and his boss and the love story between Harry and the mayor of Dante's Peak (Linda Hamilton). This part is slow going, and had me looking at my watch. Then all the sudden Dante's Peak explodes (who could have predicted that?) and although the action is dry and stale, there is enough tension to keep the movie going from here on.
On a special effects level, Dante's Peak is incredible. On a story level it's nothing more than cold slowing lava. Is it worth seeing? If it is a matinee showing, sure, go see it on the big screen for the special effects.
Steve -- steve kong (dt@wco.com steve@mp.sbay.org) the mookie online network bbs - +1.408.942.1984 (mp.sbay.org) web - http://www.wco.com/~dt/
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews