An earthquake shatters a peaceful Los Angeles morning and opens a fissure deep into the earth, causing lava to start bubbling up. As a volcano begins forming in the La Brea Tar Pits, the director of the city's emergency management service, working with a geologist, must then use every resource in the city to try and stop the volcano from consuming LA.
Hundreds of screen technicians obviously slaved on the effects -- and for what? A dopey subplot about a bogus arrest. Soap opera involving Jones' injured daughter.
– Mike Clark,
USA Today,
1 Jan 2000
rotten:
A flatulent blast of superheated air from the seething bowels of Hollywood...
– Gary Kamiya,
Salon.com,
1 Jan 2000
rotten:
Like the substantially better Twister, this film insists on a thunderous, exhausting pace that inevitably becomes deflating.
– Janet Maslin,
New York Times,
1 Jan 2000
fresh:
The coast may be toast, but it's the lava, covering everything like a malevolent tide of melted butter, that makes this a disaster picture that's tastier than usual.
– Kenneth Turan,
Los Angeles Times,
14 Feb 2001
rotten:
Never generates a head of true excitement, partly because the characters remain constructs designed to perform defined functions, and partly due to the time-worn hokiness of the whole disaster-film format.