Skyfire

It's all far more entertaining than it likely has any right to be.

It's no great leap forward in filmmaking, but the big-budget disaster movie "Skyfire" does prove that China is now capable of producing its own brand of utterly preposterous and enjoyably trashy popcorn entertainment for a global audience.

Won't erase memories of 'Dante's Peak' or 'Volcano,' and even they weren't very good.

It's extremely heroic and a lot of fun. I had a hoot!

It's dumb and cartoonish as can be and there's never a single moment in which you care at all about anything going on, not even when they drag in an endangered child in order to tug on the heartstrings.

Mostly this isn't the thrill-ride you might be hoping for. There's plenty of fire but, oddly, not much heat.

Skyfire offers substantial guilty-pleasure fun.

You don't watch a movie about an erupting volcano for the human drama, and where Skyfire excels is with its special effects.

You know those lenticular pictures you look at and see one thing, then look at from a slightly different angle and see something else? Skyfire is like one of them. Depending on your perspective, the movie is either middling or awesome.

It's an unabashedly silly movie fueled by dodgy visual effects and formulaic plotting, but also a fun one that is genuinely charming in the way it unironically recycles cliches.