User Reviews

Some of the various cockpit constructions in this fine film would make dear old Edward D, Wood Jr. proud. And like Sir Wood's oeuvre, Airplane vs. Volcano is hilariously terrible. Indeed, it is a rather one-sided fight from the get-go, and a very strange one. Plot-wise, an airplane flies into a ring of volcanoes that rise instantly, seemingly controlled by a Master 'Cano, and then charts how they will escape with only a light aircraft pilot at the stick! The film throws in a bunch of stock characters, such as the handy vulcanologist, an Airplane-style pilot, a plucky stewardess, a cute kid, a brave mechanic, a commanding officer who won't risk his men to save the stricken passengers, a communications trooper who will risk the brig to do the right thing, and a villain. Of the villain, his motives are totally bizarre and soon go from fear to pure selfish evil (motivated by his erroneous belief that an auto-pilot can do everything, even, presumably, safely landing the plane). Anyhoo, the airplane faces all kinds of flaming balls and fuel malarkey, and the film even manages to have a Star Wars-type finale with poorly rendered CGI (or even models on strings – Ed Wood lives, again!) taking on Mount Doom, and the visuals at the climax really are laughable (which of course just adds to the pleasure of the picture). However, Dean Cain takes it all very seriously, and so I shall end my mirth-filled observations here, in honour of his thespian commitment in bringing us Clark Kent vs. the Volcano.

I only watched this because I like Dean Cain. It started out pretty well, which surprised me since it is a SyFy movie. The scientific stuff is probably laughable but I don't know. Several stereotypes in this one. The colonel, the Arab who, while not a terrorist, tries to take over the plane with a broken booze bottle (aren't they all plastic now?) and attempts to throw Cain out of the plane, and the volcanologist who just happens to be on the plane on his way to join the monitoring team and is also a whiz at computers. The movie was okay until the last 30 minutes or so. Cain flies the airliner like it is a fighter for goodness sakes!! He uses a magma ball to knock off two damaged engines and avoids all sorts of debris, WRONG. I just can't go on with what else is so stupid about the end of this should have never in my opinion been made movie. Oh Dean WHY???

When this movie started I thought it was going to be a comedy.

Then I realized they actually meant for this to be serious.

As it turns out it was a comedy that started taking itself FAR too serious.

As other reviewers have already stated it is cheesy with shallow characters that are as ridiculous as I have ever seen.

There is so little fact that I laughed till I thought I would cry. It was worth watching just for the laugh.

I would say that the acting was like something out of middle school production but I wouldn't insult the middle school students.

The CGI was substandard at best.

Even for a b-movie this is just a terrible movie with a story that contains so much nonsense, it could be written by a 4-year old.

A 747 locked on autopilot, but a guy (who never flew a 747 before) that can control the plane better than any experienced pilot (using flying debris to rip off an engine), while flying through volcanic ashes and debris for hours, apparently without any problems for the plane. Volcanoes that can rise out of the sea in seconds without any effects (waves) to the sea. A guy fixing a 747 jet-engine in flight by using a hammer... And these are just a few facts. Add a few terrible actors and a even worse storyline and you'll get this result.

I've seen a lot of good movies (A and B) and a lot of bad movies (A and B) , but this is the first movie where i had to force myself to watch it till the end.

Conclusion: A waste of time.

I have to admit my curiosity was somewhat aroused by the title. I'm always up for a volcano disaster movie, and this seemed like an original take on it. Well, there was an airplane, there was a volcano, and the movie was certainly a disaster...

The movie starts with a volcanologist, Joseph (Ralph William Tarr), setting up equipment to monitor an increase in activity from a dormant volcano on an island off the coast of Hawaii. After the equipment is up and running, Joseph's colleague, Lisa Whitmore (Robin Givens) warns him that the volcanic activity on the island is increasing drastically and that he needs to leave immediately. Before he can leave, the island erupts, engulfing him in lava, leaving Lisa very upset when she figures out what has happened. The scene switches to the eponymous plane, where after a brief introduction to some of the passengers, we go into the cockpit, and find out that due to the eruption of a ring of volcanos near the coast of Hawaii, the plane's electronics and magnetics are not working properly, and the plane is flying off course and too low. Before the pilot and copilot can fix these problems, they are killed, leaving the stewardess, Rita (Tamara Goodwin) and passengers to fend for themselves. Fortunately, we have Marshall Jim Kirkland (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) on hand to take charge, finding Rick Pierce (Dean Cain) who has some knowledge of flying, but has never flown a plane this large, and volcanologist, Landon Todd (Matt Mercer), a friend of Lisa's who is on his way to join her team, among the passengers. Rick takes over piloting the plane, and coaxes it through a series of harrowing disasters caused by volcanic ash and lava bombs which bombard the plane as it flies through the ring of erupting volcanoes. Adding to the trouble is Carlos Crieger (David Vega), a psychopath whose actions are bizarre and whose motives are never explained. Eventually Landon manages to contact the military to ask for help, by this point Lisa is on the base to help out with her scientific knowledge, a process that would go much more smoothly if the officer in charge, Colonel Ryker (Mike Jerome Putnam) would actually listen to her. He, however, would rather concentrate on evacuating those in harm's way from the eruption, especially after a pyroclastic flow kills everyone at a nearby beach. However, after much coaxing, and forged orders that end in failure, Ryker relents, and captains the mission to rescue the passengers and blow up the the volcano that has emerged in the center of the ones which had been erupting. From there it's a race against time and nature to save the passengers and stop the volcano.

Like most disaster movies, the writing is atrocious. The science seems a bit off, as it often is, and most glaring is the fact that exploding a bomb in a volcano usually doesn't stop an eruption. If it impacts the eruption at all, it would probably make it worse. Likewise, it shouldn't take the plane that long to fly out of the ring of volcanos, although to the passengers that part of the flight might seem endless, unless, or course, the engines fail due to the volcanic ash, or the plane gets hit by a lava bomb. There is precious little character development, so we understand little of what haunts Rick, although it is obvious that he is haunted by something in his past, nor do we now why Ryker is so driven to save everyone but the passengers of the plane, or why Rita seems to be so drawn to Rick. The biggest mystery is why Crieger is so awful, although his ultimate comeuppance is quite satisfying. And the reliance on cliched scenes is really annoying, especially at the end when it bogs down the action, such as it is.

Surprisingly, the acting is actually pretty good. Cain, Givens, Hilton-Jacobs, Goodwin, and Mercer all do a good job of creating characters you care about and route for. Unfortunately, none of them is able to rise above the awful writing. Putnam and Vega are over-the-top with their characters, to the further detriment of the movie. And the special effects are nothing to write home about, except for the apparently obligatory scene where a lava bomb burns a hole through the chest of someone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It's kind of sad that a premise that seems to be quite original was executed in such an uninspired way. However, the movie can be enjoyable if you don't take it too seriously.

Even though Robin Givens and Dean Cain made valiant efforts to save this movie with their acting abilities they were doomed from the start.

The script was pathetic and my five year old Great Niece would have made a better Director.

This was an attempt to make a disaster movie but the only disaster was the movie itself.

SPOILER BEGINS

The movie is about a commercial plane ending up in the centre of not one but at least six erupting volcanoes which have been extinct for over a million years.

Inevitably the two pilots end up dead or disabled and it is left to Dean Cain (Rick Pierce), a pilot who only flies small planes, to save the day. (Echoes of Kurt Russell in Executive Decision).

Lisa Whitmore (Robin Givens) is a specialist in volcanoes and ends up trying to assist the military in saving not only the passengers on the plane but those on the ground affected by the eruptions.

Needless to say she encounters Colonel Ryker (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) who is not intelligent enough even to command even a platoon of empty milk bottles.

It remains to be seen whether he actually becomes a good guy or not.

Of course there was also the inevitable loony toon on the plane too, but how he manages to escape the plane beggars belief.

I won't spoil your misery while watching the move by telling you about the climax of the movie but I will say I was moved to tears (in disbelief of how stupid it was)

SPOILER ENDS

This movie did have the potential to be slightly more than average, and therefore watchable but because of the miserable script and direction in my opinion this is the worst movie so far this year.

The special effects were no more than just passable.

I did enjoy the song at the credits stage though.

Every once in a while a movie so bad will catch your eye and this was definitely one of them. Starring Dean Cane so you know its going to be awful when their main actor hasn't been on TV since Ripley's believe it or not was actually watched.

To be fair I didn't finish this movie though I tried my darndest. Spoiler I quit when they made their genius plan to use the life raft as a parachute to get off the plane. though I don't know how that would even be possible out of a Wiley coyote cartoon.

So all in all I wouldn't recommend anyone watch this movie unless your a die hard dean cane fan then id recommend going to a therapist to get some help.

When dormant volcanoes underwater near a Pacific island awakened and emerged from the ocean, disaster looms, especially as an airplane heading towards Hawaii flies over it. The pilot and co-pilot are killed, and several passengers and the single stewardess (on a 747 no less!, Obviously someone called in sick) must take over to attempt to land it.

With the plane stuck on autopilot, the plane seems doomed to hit by the molten hot rocks, and extreme panic begins when a hot headed passenger announces to the others that the pilots are obviously dead. Even though the story is deadly serious, there are moments that make you laugh unintentionally, for me the biggest moment being when another passenger is struck on the arm by the fast-moving beverage cart, causing me to crack for another passenger to ask him to hand them a coke.

The special CGI effects are actually pretty decent in this which is why my rating is actually higher for it than most other Asylum films that I've seen. I'm not much of a fan of leading actor Dean Cain, but I was delighted to see veteran actor Lawrence Hilton Jacobs of "Welcome Back Kotter" there as a federal agent. The fact that this is more intense and gripping than some of the other stupid films from this studio does make it somewhat more memorable, but not much. This gets a prize for the dumbest line in any of Asylum's movies: "I minored in genius but I majored in awesome."