A naked woman, her face flushed with carnality, steps into the water. We know something menacing lurks below -- you can almost hear the John Williams score throb on the soundtrack. But this isn't Jaws: the body of water is a volcanic hot spring, the threat is no mere predator but the blazing core of the earth, and Roger Donaldson's Dante's Peak is yet another by-the-numbers disaster movie that unreels like a timid amusement-park ride.

Nothing infernal here, just a rehash of plot points and clichés from two decades of similar films blasted away by synthetic thrills like buildings before the pyroclastic flow in Peak's most impressive sequence (for those keeping track, it's the same as the blast wave in Independence Day, though the rescue of the plucky family dog occurs in a different scene). Pierce Brosnan adds some class as the volcanologist whose warnings of an impending eruption are brushed aside by the local townspeople eager to attract investors (Jaws again and again and again). Linda Hamilton is staunch as the pretty mayor and love interest. The effects look expensive, but the most affecting one is a nasty compound fracture. Call it the human touch. Dante's Peak should kill Star Wars at the box office, which is only fair, since such mindless spectacles are that film's legacy. At the Cheri, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle and in the suburbs.