The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake

This movie wasn't bad, as it dealt with the biggest earthquake Los Angeles could have. The film focuses equally on the preparation the city makes and the actual earthquake itself. All in all, not too bad, with decent performances.

** 1/2 out of ****

Joanna Kerns is the sister who takes care of her family andworks hard studying earthquakes, which she predicts will happen soon. Her sister is played by Lindsey Frost whose hormones are going through the roof, symbolically like an earthquake, in this movie. Dr. Claire Winslow (Kerns) has arguments with her sister, her mother, her husband, and her daughter, all leading up to the big earthquake. More people should of died than in the movie. This movie was a year after the SF bay area earthquake and was made to take advantage of the fear that there would be another one in California soon. I'm an Earthquake freak. Oddly enough we have had several small ones in the past year and that leads me to believe there will be a bigger one in the coming months. They have been growing in size and that is a guarantee that a big one is coming. Overall the movie is good, well acted, and interesting. It's the best damn earthquake movie I've seen, period.

I found this to be a decent disaster movie. The story itself is the weakest part since it has too many plot going on in it. I mean there's a lot of plotlines that are connected with the earthquake and does feel unfocused. I do like it shows the dangers on being in a earthquake and how it affects peoples lives. Unfortunately, some of them aren't resolve that well and are forgotten about. The biggest highlight are the disaster scenes which is done really well for a made for TV movie. It shows the destruction it cause to a city and how many damage it can cause it. The special effects is done pretty good by showing it on scene and how terrifying it is. As for the acting, it's a hit or miss with some good acting, but some of it isn't that good.

The Great Los Angeles Earthquake is a decent disaster movie that is one of the better ones out there.

"The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake" is a chilling, well-made disaster film that was made-for-TV and aired on NBC back in the fall of 1990 as a two-part movie. Joanna Kerns (star of TV's "Growing Pains") stars as a seismologist who worries that the earthquake of the title is going to strike Los Angeles. But before she can make her prediction, she crosses paths with her family members, co-workers, and city officials. The movie is long at times (this review is based on the entire four hour movie that ran when it premiered on NBC, not the shortened home video version) but it kept me interested and entertained through its entire four hours. The second time the movie aired on NBC they cut an hour of footage and shortened it to a three hour film. That version was pretty good too. But then I saw the home video version with half the movie gone. This is the version to forget about. Stick with either the three hour version or the full-length four hour version if you can find it on TV.

The three and four hour versions: *** (out of four)

The home video version: ** (out of four)

Unfortunately, there was never any such thing, scientifically speaking, as a "good" earthquake movie. Though located smack in the middle of Earthquake Country, Hollywood has reflected the unfortunate ignorance of millions of residents. Most of the monster quakes that devastate Los Angeles in the movies are on the San Andreas Fault, 50 miles from downtown at its closest approach--again, parrotting the common myth that this is where the next "Big One" will come from. "The Big One" is a refreshing departure from this illconcieved mold. Though by no means a great movie, it zeroes in on the fact that there are faults criss-crossing the Los Angeles Basin that could cause major damage without being a "monster." In many ways, it was an unintended preview of the Northridge earthquake in 1994--the movie's quake was centered on the Elysian Park fault, which is a blind thrust fault that runs under downtown Los Angeles, while Northridge was also on a blind thrust fault under the San Fernando Valley. Though the seismology "details" were typical movie fare--foreshocks, unexplained geologic occurrences, and a doomsday prediction by a scientist that everyone else tries to silence (or at least ignore), it does demonstrate that something like this could happen in a much more believable scenario. It is not a "great" earthquake movie, but it is certainly an improvement.