DANTE’S PEAK erupted across 1997’s big screens with $115,000,000 worth of calamity-voyeur special effects and Simple Simon script calculations clear enough to prompt an observant 6th-grader to think “Hey, I could do that.”  As disaster flicks go, this one occupies middle ground between the classics and the dogs, with its chief claim to fame being that it was a few tremor & fireball levels better than the year’s other lava & cliche spill, Volcano.

The small Washington State town of ‘Dante’s Peak’ has been named America’s 2nd most-desirable place to live, its evergreen surrounding forests and lakes towered over by the dormant volcano the happy burg is named for. Volcanologist ‘Harry Dalton’ (Pierce Brosnan) is certain that seismic activity indicates a big blast is imminent and tries to warn the locals. He falls into company with the town’s mayor, ‘Rachel Wando’ (Linda Hamilton) and her two young children. Harry and Rachel’s mutual glow is nearing spark ignition when geology barges in and turns dozing Dante into an inferno.

Along with the array of special effects, viable chemistry between Brosnan (43, halfway thru Bondage) and Hamilton, 40, is a positive, which is crucial considering the contrived script concocted by Leslie Bohem. Where to start? There’s a team of jokey associates from the US Geological Survey, one of whom, after telling Brosnan that their team leader was killed (“He didn’t make it“) offers supposed man-comfort with “At least he got to see the show“. There are the profits-threatened town businessmen, cute squabbling kids, a dog to rescue, a together lady who had a bad husband and so is free to fall for the handsome but human hero that ordinary guys (those not j.o.’s for Rambo’s) can accept and that their dates can sigh over his vulnerability (because he lost his wife–in Colombia, to a volcanic hot rock headshot that killed her but not with a too yucky mess). You have to accept that a truck, running on wheels after its tires exploded when driving across a 2000° lava flow, could somehow outrun a superheated pyroclastic cloud that would be clocking a mean 450 mph. How many he-dudes dumped their Toyota’s for a Chevy Suburban V10 Custom 4×4? Just in case. If watched with captions, there ought to be one with “soaring instrumental music plays”: actually the score is fine, the awe-prepping main theme from epic vet James Newton Howard with the majority of the full-bodied soundtrack composed by thriller-oriented John Frizzell.

So, after we survive, do you want to, like…y’know…?

Luckily, the likable leads are given help dealing with the script by having a good director in Roger Donaldson (The Bounty, Thirteen Days, The World’s Fastest Indian) who paces it all well and makes good use of the scenic locations in Idaho, Washington and California. The destructorama effects deliver a decent 7.5 on the bang for buck scale.

Earnings of $67,100,000 in North America placed 20th in 1997, with another $111,000,000 showing up from abroad.

With Charles Hallahan (early on you just know ‘he ain’t gonna make it’), Jamie Renee Smith, Jeremy Foley, Elizabeth Hoffman (irritating), Grant Heslov (more irritating), Tzi Ma, Lee Garlington and Peter Jason. 108 minutes.