1990s Epic Disaster Movie On Hulu Is The Nostalgia Trip You’ve Been Waiting For

Released just two months after the arguably more realistic Dante’s Peak starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, Volcano boasts a very similar premise (more on that later) but in a more urban setting. Set primarily in downtown Los Angeles, we’re introduced to Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones), the newly appointed director of the Office of Emergency Management (O.E.M.). Mike is your typical “workaholic father trying his best,” but decides to abruptly end his vacation after a minor earthquake takes place in Los Angeles.

Mike’s daughter, Kelly (Gaby Hoffman), has the patience of a saint because she realizes that although her father can’t competently cook a plate of scrambled eggs, he’s incredibly good at deescalating emergency situations.

In the classic, “I warned you, but you didn’t listen,” fashion that’s found in every single disaster movie, Mike urges MTA Chairman Stan Olber (John Carroll Lynch) to shut down the subway lines just in case the earthquake was the first of many more. While Stan is right to not want to cause mass hysteria, especially due to the lack of evidence suggesting that there’s more to come, something just doesn’t sit right with Mike, who teams up with Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche), a seismologist who has reason to believe that a volcano beneath the fault line is venting hot gas and ready to blow sky-high.

As you would expect, Volcano quickly shows its namesake and the unprepared city is quickly pelted with lava bombs, hot gas, and an inescapable amount of ash raining down from the sky.

Tommy Lee Jones takes charge in Volcano by doing what he does best in most of his big-budget blockbusters from this period of his career: delegating loudly. Communicating VIA radio with Emmit Reese (Don Cheadle) back at O.E.M. headquarters, Mike devises a number of plans to redirect the flow of lava away from the rest of the city in order to minimize damage. Matters get complicated when Mike gets separated from Sandy, and has to make a number of daring (read: completely unrealistic) escapes from the lava that’s quickly filling the streets.

Ironically enough, Mike comes up with a plan that will save the city from certain destruction, which in turn causes a considerable amount of damage by design … but it’s the only way to save the day.

Seeing its theatrical release just two months after Dante’s Peak, Volcano was heavily criticized for being just another carbon-copy disaster movie of its time. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times was especially harsh on the film for not boasting the same level of realism that its contemporary had to offer. While I don’t necessarily disagree with Ebert’s assessment because seismologists have weighed in and asserted that Dante’s Peak gives viewers a more accurate (though exaggerated) depiction on what actually happens, Volcano is an infinitely more entertaining film because of how impossibly over-the-top it is in its delivery.

The way I see it, Volcano accurately portrays how emergency personnel would handle a real-life eruption in an urban setting, but the disaster depicted in the film itself requires you to suspend more than a healthy amount of disbelief. Dante’s Peak, which is in a more rural setting, has more convincing special effects and production on the action front, but shoots itself in the foot because of its stilted dialogue and forced romantic subplot that will make you actually wish for a volcanic eruption to occur in your living room while watching it.

Watching both films back-to-back, however, makes for an interesting double-feature that has more than enough action, and just enough cheese to make for an enjoyable evening streaming movies at home.

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Volcano was nominated for a Golden Raspberry award in 1997 for the “Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property” category, but ultimately lost to Con Air. But I don’t see this as a bad thing because, like I said, movies that fall into this sub-genre are meant to be a form of wish-fulfillment of the highest order (we’re all waiting for Twisters, aren’t we?). We all want to be Mike – barking orders and looking for our familiar someone, all while saving a city from going up in flames in the most epic way possible – and anybody who says otherwise is a complete liar.

To experience the disaster, the action, the adventure, and the “hotter than hell” atmosphere that Volcano claims to have on its promotional posters, you can stream the title on Hulu and have one heck of a time wading through the wreckage while yelling “they didn’t listen!” in your best Randy Marsh voice.