San Andreas

I'm a sucker for a disaster film, I pretty much love all of them but I do have 'some' limitations.

This one does enough to stay on the good side of the ledger.

What works, the effects (mostly) and The Rock. What doesn't, The Rock and the Disney-fying of anyone dying.

What do I mean? The Rock is hit and miss in this one, he pulls of some great scenes whereas others are just a bridge too far (he may have caught this from Fast Furious). The effects are excellent. The deaths are sanitised for perhaps younger viewers, the cost of this is tension and any real concern you may have had for the family. They are obviously going to come out ok so we don't have to explain anything to the kiddies!

But a disaster movie is a disaster movie so thumbs up from me!

San Andreas (2015)

*** (out of 4)

After a massive earthquake strikes California, a father (Dwayne Johnson) must struggle to try and rescue his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) and his daughter (Alexandra Daddario) who finds herself somewhere in San Fransisco. While people are trying to dig themselves out of the damage, a seismologist (Paul Giamatti) warns people that the big one hasn't yet happened.

SAN ANDREAS is without question one of the dumbest movies that you're going to see in the year 2015 or perhaps any other year. I mean, things happen here that are without question quite stupid and that includes a really dumb love story and the logic of some of the scenes are downright laughable. With that said, one really shouldn't go into this movie expecting anything other than a popcorn movie meant to keep you entertained and this film certainly does that as it's a pretty good throwback to the Irwin Allen disaster pictures like EARTHQUAKE, THE TOWERING INFERNO and THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.

I really can't believe I'm saying this but the special effects are certainly the highlight of the picture. I'm usually not a fan of CGI because more times than not it just looks fake and takes away from the story but we're reaching a point in technology where it's really hard to see the effect, which is just great. There's a massive amount of destruction throughout this film and I must admit that the effects make you feel that everything you're watching is real. This includes the actual earthquake footage as well as all the destruction around the state. There are countless buildings that fall and the aftermath of the quake looks extremely realistic.

The story itself is quite stupid as we get all sorts of predictable scenes but I can't really blame the film for this as the entire disaster genre had silly melodrama going on. The relationship issues between Johnson and Gugino are quite stupid and of course there's a side story dealing with him not being able to save a daughter that died. The screenplay pretty much throws everything into the mix and just hopes any of it sticks. Again, it's hard to bash the "dumb" story too much since the film is so entertaining but I will give the film credit for delivering the highest body count in the history of cinema.

Again, going into SAN ANDREAS expecting anything other than entertainment probably isn't the best idea. The actors are all entertaining in their own right and that's especially true for Daddario. As far as Johnson goes, he's certainly not the greatest actor in the world but he makes for a great action star.

If you understand what a disaster movie is about and how it works you will go and have a nice experience just as I did, certainly superior to the "2012" or "Day After Tomorrow" dullness.

The usual cheesiness in disaster movie is there, the characters are so stereotypical it's hardly believable and worst of all it commits the usual, stupid mistake of having characters make it out of a situation just in time before everything collapses. This mistakes really annoys me firstly because it repeats itself a dozen times in the film but most of all because it's worthless: it does not add stakes or tension, they would be exactly the same, but except for maybe twice in the film situations get resolved just in time and the uselessness of it really annoyed me. The film tries too hard to give it's characters depth and barely succeeds in it. I cannot deny I was rooting for them, that maybe being due to the fact that the actors involved are honestly all doing a good enough job, but the fact that it tries to achieve character empathy through clichés that have been present in cinema since the beginning of time is ridiculous.

That being said, it does deliver the goods of a disaster movie and delivers them much more competently than the recent disaster films we have seen on the big screen. With the exception of the finale where things are unnecessarily blown up to eleven, there isn't exaggeration. The set pieces are for the major part breath-taking and original enough. I counted actually two times where my mouth totally dropped in genuine amazement. I was riveted by many scenes and this is probably due to the fact that the director never overuses CGI. It is used in the perfect dose, there is enough practicality involved and the fact that the set pieces aren't always the biggest most blown up ones made it better, it gave the film more stakes. Moreover there is a great use of long takes in certain parts of the film, one in particular is very long and threw me right into the action like no other disaster movie ever had done before.

If you know what you are in for you will have a good time and you will be given back your money's worth, you won't want to be re-watching this movie anytime, but that is perfectly fine and fits the film in what it is trying to achieve.

My love of the disaster genre means that I can enjoy this type of movie despite the myriad problems with it, alongside the inherent cheesiness and the poor writing which makes it laughable in places. It pales in comparison to stuff from the 1970s like THE TOWERING INFERNO and EARTHQUAKE, but it's certainly better than modern SyFy Channel and Asylum offerings, even if that's just because of the massive budget alone.

The story is written so that the disaster scenes keep occurring throughout the movie. The CGI effects work is extensive, but it's also pretty good, and certainly better than in the awful 2012. Yes, you get all the flag-waving nonsense associated with this type of film, but you also get plenty of suspense scenes and depictions of post-earthquake devastation that you don't usually get to see in the movies.

Dwayne Johnson continues to be a hulking, mildly charismatic presence in the movies, although he's no Schwarzenegger. Alexandra Daddario is there for her looks and certainly succeeds in that respect. The rest of the cast don't fare so well, with Ioan Gruffudd virtually reprising his role from SANCTUM and Paul Giamatti on autopilot, although at least we get to find out what happened to Art Parkinson (the disappearing Rickon Stark from TV's GAME OF THRONES). SAN ANDREAS is certainly undemanding entertainment, and not a film I'm in any hurry to sit through again, but compared to other offerings in this packed sub-genre, it's not THAT bad.

I read some of the reviews here and am wondering what all the negative reviewers expected. Who didn't know this was a huge, costly disaster movie? Who didn't know there were going to be many unbelievable scenes? Who didn't know there would be some cheesy dialogue?

Well, I, for one, enjoyed it. The last good disaster movie I saw was The Towering Inferno, and you know that was a long, long time ago. It's still my favorite disaster flick. San Andreas, of course, had much better special effects. (several decades later, better effects, right?) I thought the scenes of the destruction were amazing.

We all know disaster movies usually focus on a handful of people in it and this one was no different. The movie was entertaining for me. I hope it is for you, too. :)