Magnitude 10.5

Taped it, since I had my doubts beforehand. Good thing too. Just zapping the ads out knocked about 45 minutes off the 4 hour run time. Fast forwarding through some of the drek knocked another hour off.

The science was retarded. If their stupid little idea of nukes would have had half a chance of doing what they said it was doing, it would have required hundreds of them, not 6, and they would have had to been thousands of feet under ground, not hundreds. I don't know why I should be bothered about that as it makes as much sense as arguing the "science" in Star Trek.

Phones that still worked when convenient to the "plot".

It had every cliche known to man and monkey. "Marshal Law" (Is that Jude Law's brother?)

I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because the little bit of footage they had of things falling down was done pretty well.

I have seen this movie once, but I just don't understand how any of the things that happen in the movie are physically possible, because they probably aren't. Let's see, there is a 7.9 Earthquake in Seattle, a man happens to be able to perform stunts while riding a bike down the streets and tries to out run the Space Needle and also manages to stay on his bike and ride it like there is no shaking at all. But this is only the beginning of the unrealistic stuff you see in the film. Later in Reading, California an 8.4 Earthquake occurs and a rift opens up into the ground and you also see a train. Now instead of having the hole open up and swallow the train right there, they decide to use a even funnier method and have it exactly parallel with the tracks then eventually have gravity pull the train in, also you might probably notice that the train is going the exact same speed as the earthquake to. Later in San Francisco a 9.2 Earthquake occurs causing the Golden Gate bride to collapse and what do you see, people standing up and running. If a 8.0 earthquake occurred in real life people would be immediately thrown from the ground. But the height of the unrealistic story plot is when the 10.5 earthquake hits, and practically destroys everything in California, but everything around the state is almost completely unharmed how do you explain this. Even tough they didn't do a good job with the realism it is kind of fun to watch and the science isn't as bad as the movie science in Core.

... so I'm being more than generous for the cinematography, sound, and special effects (they do give out Oscars for these after all) and raising it to 3/10, and still I'm feeling very generous given it is neither Christmas nor my birthday. I thought this thing had been embarrassingly and quietly buried by the networks a decade ago, and there it was today on a cable channel! That I actually pay for! This thing is a camp classic that seems to aspire to be something in the vein of "Independence Day", except this film does not have Will Smith and manages to make that 1996 film look like Citizen Kane in comparison.

A bunch of earthquakes strike up and down the west coast making Dr. Samantha Hill (Kim Delaney), "an intellectual earthquake expert" - do they actually give out such degrees and job titles? - believe that there is an even bigger earthquake coming. She manages to keep a straight face spouting lines like "These are not from our fault. They are from the faults affected by our fault." Hey this dialogue is somebody's fault! She predicts a "big one" will come and lop off a piece of the entire west coast UNLESS...they follow her cunning plan. Of course this involves nuclear warheads planted all along the west coast and therefore a massive migration away from the west coast for everybody. And we must have a tent hospital with lots of doctors out in the desert encampments being forced to make life and death decisions, acting like they have never had to do this before. Are these guys all podiatrists or something? But I digress.

This thing drags on for four hours so we need lots of interpersonal relationships that need healing, including a father/daughter pair that I didn't recognize until today. Hey, that's Kaley Cuoco as the daughter when she was only 17, three years before "Big Bang Theory", here in a film in the tradition of Irwin Allen, who ironically believed in the theory that any film with a big enough bang is worthwhile entertainment! Oh, and then there is Jeff Bridges as the president, who proves he still has that common touch by playing basketball with Fred Ward's character, who although he is the FEMA director, actually gets his hands dirty in the disaster. Oh well, at least he wasn't at some horse show at the time. See Hurricane Katrina and FEMA director Michael Brown for reference.

Well after four hours of sitting through this I will tell you that "the movie ends with a big explosion". It would have to, else there is really no payoff. I'm going to make you sit through the entire thing to learn anything more. If you must. Not recommended for anything but beer bong or drinking game enhanced laughter.

This isn't really worthy of a serious review, being just the worst kind of TV movie dreck that it is possible to conjure. Anybody that rated this higher than a 5 needs professional help at once. Instead, here's what this movie will teach really dumb people (the ones who rated it 5+)...

1. The best way to avoid a collapsing building in an earthquake is to ride a BMX bike directly away from, but in the fall line of, the said building. You should also resist the temptation to avoid being crushed to a pulp by the simple expedient of turning down a side street as that would imply rational thought on your part (and we all know BMX'ers have no brains).

2. Earthquakes will form cracks in the ground that will chase a train exactly along the route of its tracks, even going around corners in order to follow the track exactly. Or maybe the track actually held the faultline together....

3. The above-mentioned cracks are so smart that, once they have succeeded in catching and engulfing the train, they will immediately stop opening up at once, literally the moment the engine goes down into the abyss.

4. Everyone in an earthquake will have to overcome some kind of personal /familial/professional problem.

5. An entire town can be swallowed without the slightest trace remaining.

6. A full-grown man will succumb to poisonous fumes far more quickly than a woman half (or less) his body mass.

7. The answer to stopping earthquakes is to detonate multiple nuclear warheads beneath the surface of the earth in the conceit that it will fuse a faultline together.

8. Disaster control centres have map displays that depict nuclear explosions as tiny, superimposed balls of fire. I kid you not...

9. The careers of Beau Bridges and Fred Ward are at an end. No! Wait! This bit is actually a fact. I wonder how galling it is to poor old Beau that his father and brother are/were much more successful than he is/was/will ever be.

10. After the big quake is over, people will shuffle mindlessly forward in an unintentional parody of Day of the Dead.

In fact, there really is only one thing to redeem this movie (at least in some tiny way) and that is the miniature and CGI effects of destruction. They are pretty obviously what they are - mini or CGI - but they are by far the most interesting thing in this otherwise diabolically awful excuse of a film.

Elsewise all the film contains (Apart from the already mentioned points above) is awful shaky-cam footage (it makes it look more realistic you know!), ironing-board acting, ludicrous science-abuse, characters so stereotypical and clichéd that you wonder if they were available "off-the-shelf", terribly over-the-top melodramatic music which is actually laughably awful in most scenes and let's not forget the Hulk-like split-imaging which at times makes the whole thing look like the opening credits of Dallas!

Oh my! This is a real stinker! Avoid this like it was a real earthquake! Unless you want a huge, huge laugh at the dumbness of it all.

They had a preview screening of this for my office. I work with a bunch of seismologists, and the overall consensus was that when it came to the science, they got *everything* wrong. The room was full of people laughing uproariously at one howler after another. The special effects were pretty good, but the acting was kind of hard to take. Too melodramatic. And not just the science was wrong. The bit that kind of summed it up was a scene where a TV news report was showing a banner that the President had declared 'marshal law'. Don't the writers have a dictionary? Anyway, if you like bad disaster movies, this is entertaining. But it's pure fantasy, and not at all an accurate portrayal.