The majority of the story, however, is set in the firehouse, in firemen's houses and in the bar where they all go to get drunk together. In these settings, the movie piles on the schmaltz and the lame attempts at humor so that we'll see the film as a comedy with a big heart, a really big heart. These sequences, which feel both labored and long, are hard to get excited about since the story never creates characters who are more than caricatures.

The story is structured as a series of flashbacks, as trapped fireman Jack Morrison (Joaquin Phoenix) watches his life flash before his eyes as building walls fall and burn all around him. Outside, his old captain and now Chief Kennedy (John Travolta) directs a large rescue effort to save him from what looks like will be certain death.

Although most of the plot concerns the life of a fireman, we learn little we couldn't have guessed, save the predilection of fireman to play a recurring series of really silly practical jokes on each other like a bunch of frat boys who never grew up. The first gag, shown in the trailers, has the rookie Jack being tricked into confessing his sins to Lenny Richter (Robert Patrick), a fellow fireman who is impersonating a priest. These incidents aren't especially funny or consequential. In fact, whenever the fires aren't burning, the movie appears to just be marking time until it can light something up again.

Our heroic firemen deserve a better movie than LADDER 49, which tries earnestly but fails nonetheless.

LADDER 49 runs 1:55. It is rated PG-13 for "intense fire and rescue situations, and for language" and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.