This corny and manipulative movie taxes your ability to suspend disbelief and predictably punishes characters for their hubris--earmarks of a great disaster flick, if the tone is just right.

While the plot is thin and there's little action till the big blow some 60 minutes into the film, a volcano offers a greater variety of thrills than your basic cyclone ever could.

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.

Dante's Peak, written by Leslie Bohem and directed by Roger Donaldson, follows the disaster formula so faithfully that if you walk in while the movie is in progress, you can estimate how long the story has to run. That it is skillful is a tribute to the filmmakers.

Director Roger Donaldson ("Smash Palace," "No Way Out," "Species"), working from a script by Leslie Bohem ("Daylight"),does a serviceable job, wrapping his narrative around the big kabooms, but the real interest comes from the extraordinary barrage of sound and spectacle.

Older youngsters not threatened by PG-13 levels of intensity might pester Mom and Dad to let them see this cinematic fluff-head. For everyone else, it simply is what it is -- which, despite a budget that could feed Star Wars' Jabba the Hutt for life, isn't very much. [07Feb1997 Pg 04.D]

The special effects are suitably catastrophic, though they aren't much more clever than the computer tricks that turn up in beer commercials these days.

This is yet another one of those mindlessly enjoyable outings which eschews such unimportant details as plot or characterisation in favour of the biggest, flashiest special effects money can buy. Twister with lava, if you will.

Writer Leslie Bohem and director Roger Donaldson brush briskly through the standard scientific and romantic blather. They know that in movies like this, complexity is the province of the special-effects people.

It hardly helps, of course, to have no characters to root for. What is it about Pierce Brosnan? He's got dimples, grace, charm; he's not a movie star, exactly -- he looks as if he should be hosting something.

Dante's Peak is customary for the genre, with convincing special effects sharing screen time with standard-issue characters and situations.

"Twister" is a rush. Dante's Peak, on the other hand, is a bore. Oh, it has its moments, but most of them are concentrated in the final forty-five minutes. The first hour, which is all typical disaster movie setup, is interminable.

It seems almost beside the point to bring up the notion of plotting and characterization in such an effects-driven film ; nobody's going to rush out to catch Dante's Peak on account of the Shakespearean-caliber thespians involved.

Physicality of the second half, then, will keep the audience going, but it is not quite sufficient to camouflage the elemental silliness of storyline.