Super Eruption

Before the opening credits, rugged park ranger Richard Burgi (as Charlie Young) parachutes into a hellish countryside to rescue his pretty blonde daughter MyAnna Buring (as Claire) and her muscular young boyfriend Alex Wyndham (as Josh). The attempt appears to fail as lava covers the screen. After the credits, we meet our fourth principal player, Disaster Management Agency (DMA) volcanologist Juliet Aubrey (as Kate Brooks). She is helpless as volcanic activity covers North America and the rest of the world. Earth is about to explode when we flashback, "Two Days Earlier." Yellowstone National Park is peaceful until Mr. Wyndham finds a sexually-inclined couple scorched by a sudden blast of hot water. This is interesting as Rafael Jordan's story then proceeds like a horror movie, with the volcano as its monster. However, a disconnected science-fiction time-travel angle and cheesy special effects make it look too silly.

**** Super Eruption (3/8/11) Matt Godd ~ Richard Burgi, Juliet Aubrey, MyAnna Buring, Alex Wyndham

Why, oh why, do I keep finding myself watching SyFy original movies. I guess it's for the same reason I keep eating Bicky Burgers. You know it's not good for you, that it'll give you zits and heartburn. But damn it, it's just easy too swallow. However after sitting through it, you do have watchers guilt. You could have spend the same amount of time to watch Sunset Blvd again. Or Rear Window. Or really anything else not made by the SyFy channel.

Super Eruption is the unholy child of Dante's Peak and Frequency. Two movies I like very much. It's a cross made without any talent for screenwriting (often it feels like whole chunks of the movie are missing- like how did they get from here to there... could be I fell asleep. Could be bad writing. ) The special effects are far from special. They look like they were made by my grandmother using the Paint program on her Windows 95 computer.

The actors are there, enjoying the Bulgarian sights, possibly evaluating their life's choices. Pretty much what I'm doing, every time I finish one of these things.

In fact I found this movie pretty awful. Not the worst I've seen from SyFy, but this is little consolation. The premise seemed decent if not exactly new territory, and I have seen some of the actors before and I wouldn't call them bad actors overall(I am especially looking at MyAnna Buring). But you would never guess seeing here. It is not terrible or hilariously bad as much, but nobody is really believable and come across as bland. It doesn't help that the script is so cheesy, wishy-washy and sometimes confused too, or that you don't care for the characters at all, for they continue to be written in an underdeveloped and stereotypical manner. The music is both forgettable and sluggish-sounding. But where Super Eruption really falls down is in the story and special effects. The story is a good, if as I've said familiar, but it manages to be predictable and preposterous, with the whole business about the main character being able to see and talk to herself from a different dimension through a computer doesn't make sense, was superfluous to the entire story and with a slightly longer length the film could've explained this much more. The romance was clichéd and hokey as well. I have seen worse effects like in Titanic II, but the ones here do still look fake and as though they were made in a rush. All in all, awful instead of super, dull instead of interesting and preposterous instead of plausible or thrilling, in short not SyFy's worst but still a disaster of a film. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Yet another volcano disaster film and made by the Syfy channel?! Never really stood a chance did it?

Thing is this is slightly tweaked. What do you get when you cross a volcano movie with Frequency (2000)? You get Super Eruption which isn't as bad as you'd think.

It tells the story of an eruption occurring underneath Yellowstone park and the usual attempts at stopping it through pseudo science.

Super Eruption however has a scifi twist to it which both makes it more interesting and considerably less credible. The concept makes you think but it's 100% guaranteed to cause a migraine or two.

The decent cast keep the movie from falling into mediocrity, and though it is just another scyfy original it's certainly watchable.

The Good:

Cast do a good job

Some interesting ideas

The Bad:

Poor sfx

Usual levels of baffling stupidity

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Would Yellowstone erupting actual cause the end of the world? Let's not find out

Over the years for some reason disaster movies have found a fan base like you wouldn't believe. Most of them are a bit cheesy and make little to no sense, but still manage to attract stars as well as fans. The latest Super Eruption stars Richard Burgi with a title that pretty much speaks for itself, but does it explode with enough force to please the hardcore fans of this genre?

Super Eruption follows two Yellowstone Rangers that are forced to fight to save the day against a super volcano that erupts after thousands of years of being dormant. As with most of these movies the story is a mix of possibility and the absurd in hopes to create an edge of your seat disaster flick, but fails to ever really step out of average. The story throws way too much in too fast that it felt like it was rushing to get to the eruption aspect and then never really delivers anything. The effects are pretty cheap and looked like something off the SyFy channel, but minus the cheesy fun. Bergi is always great and does a fine job here with what he is working with, but the rest of the cast are average at best. As mentioned previously the effects should have been the showcase to make a movie like this work, but they didn't offer too many of the fun moments you expect and when they did it just didn't seem like they really pushed it for that great effect.

Obviously there isn't a great expectation of this film being a major blockbuster and is geared towards a specific audience, but those people look for a certain type of cheese and fun which this film lacks. There are sure to be those that love it and cannot wait to add it to their collection, but if you don't normally check these kinds of films out you will most likely be disappointed.