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'Dante's' Hunka, Hunka Burnin' Rock

As the camera pans down the mountain to the town where a Pioneer Days festival is taking place, you’re counting the minutes before the eruption wipes it all away. Like night follows day, the blast is coming.

This is Hollywood after all.

"Dante’s Peak" is predictable from start to finish, but the video-game style action and effects never let up long enough for you to remember how absurd it all is. It’s a blast.

Other than the quaint little town waiting to get buried, what boilerplate ingredients do we have? There’s the dashing loner (Pierce Brosnan, suprisingly engaging), a volcanologist carrying the torch for his sweetie who was killed by a volcano; the lovely single mom (Linda Hamilton), also mayor of the little town; her two smart aleck kids; her surly ex-mother-in-law, who won’t evacuate; the adorable pooch (I wonder who gets "lost" in the eruption?); a team of volcano experts who don’t agree with the Dashing Loner that the mountain’s about to blow; and a slew of vehicles unattended and ready whenever the Dashing Loner needs one.

You get the picture. On to the important stuff: the special effects.

"Twister"? Forget it. "Independence Day"? Ha! This is a whole new league. You wonder where it will all end, but meanwhile, watch in amazement as mountainsides explode in a shower of fireballs and ash; rivers overflow, wrecking dams and bridges. You can’t help thinking how much fun the special effects guys had making the models then blowing them up.

The credits list three volcanology advisers, so you figure they got some of the science right, like the lakes turning to acid. Listen and learn as the Dashing Loner shouts that the tremors he felt "were not tectonic! They were magmatic! This thing’s gonna blow!"

DANTE’S PEAK (PG-13) — Contains graphic shots of seared flesh and broken bones.