Dante's Peak' doesn't do much

Virile volcanologist Harry Dalton rolls into the bucolic burg of Dante's Peak on a sunny day.

Bands are playing. Politicos are grandstanding. A magazine has just named the town the country's second-best place to live in the 20,000-and-under population category. And a death-dealing, magma-spewing behemoth looms above it all.

You can imagine the rest. The new movie "Dante's Peak," filmed at Wallace, Idaho, displays all the elements of the classic Hollywood disaster flick, circa 1975 Irwin Allen (with stomach-turning dialogue to match). It offers:

l Pierce Brosnan as Harry Dalton, the dashing hero-scientist emotionally scarred by his tragic past ("I've always been better at figuring out volcanoes than people and politics.")

l Linda Hamilton as Rachel Wando, the spunky single mom/deli-proprietress/small-town mayor desperate to save the place she loves ("I know it's just a little town, but I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.")

l Charles Hallahan as the skeptical boss with the heart of gold who underestimates the danger at first, then comes around just in the nick of time ("For whatever it's worth, I was wrong and you were right.")

l And Elizabeth Hoffman as the crotchety grandma who refuses to leave her lifelong home on the massive mountain's flank ("This mountain's never going to hurt us. Believe me.")

But wait, there's more. There has to be.

The heroine's darling children, Lauren and Graham, played by Jamie Renee Smith and Jeremy Foley, embark on a dangerous mission to save grandma. And the family dog, an adorable mutt, disappears into the fiery maelstrom only to be miraculously reunited with his beloved owners several scenes later.

And then there's the band of scrappy geologists who come to see the show and save the town in the process. One geek's passion for caffeine, meant to inject a little comic relief, may be the most emotionally genuine performance in the movie.

There's also the dorky town council, the overacting extras and the backpacking couple that gets boiled alive while swimming naked in a hot spring.

They don't call it a disaster movie for nothing.

Brosnan, in his James Bond mode, tries to be rough and tough as the dashing volcanologist sent to rescue the tiny hamlet. But when he sits in the local bar completely peeved that neither he nor his volcano are being taken seriously, tossing nuts into his mouth with such force you fear he'll hurt himself, you can only feel sorry for the guy.

He's trying, really he is. But it's a lost cause. All Brosnan can say when the first giant plume of smoke erupts is an anti-climatic "Oh, no."

Movies of this ilk require that the characters find themselves in preposterously precarious predicaments, and "Dante's Peak" does not disappoint in that regard.

The film also makes good use of the explosive power inherent in a magmatic multimegaton menace. The last 15 minutes are truly impressive, with fire and ash raining down all around as a wall of smoky debris bears down on the escaping protagonists. (They are, of course, attempting escape in a vintage Toyota Land Cruiser.)

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"Dante's Peak" is rated PG-13 and opens today at Lewiston's Orchards Cinemas.