By Brett Blake Disaster movies are well-worn movie genre, and it’s gotten to the point where there’s very little left to be explored with the subject. For good or ill, SAN ANDREAS may just be the ultimate realization of the genre, complete with a gigantic budget that allows the movie to live up to the promise of its premise. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, or even a particularly good one, but as pure spectacle, it could have been a lot worse. Dwayne Johnson plays Ray, an LAFD rescue specialist who’s in the midst of getting a divorce from his wife, Emma (Carla Gugino), something that has put a strain on his relationship with their daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario). This basic family dynamic is the loose framework onto which the earthquake mayhem soon descends, as Paul Giamatti’s Lawrence, a geologist at Caltech, begins to believe that a massive series of earthquakes are about to break out along the San Andreas fault. Sure enough, he’s correct, and we’re quickly plunged into a series of catastrophic and enormous setpieces of destruction. That’s pretty much it as far as the “plot” goes; yes, there are some subplots, including Blake’s attempts to survive the chaos in San Francisco along with a pair of British brothers, but for the most part the narrative is only there to provide the bare minimum required to justify the mayhem. And mayhem is what the movie has in spades. The level of destruction on display is pretty much unprecedented; only Roland Emmerich’s 2012 comes close to depicting the kinds of calamities that befall the west coast of California in this movie. Never before has the screen seen so many skyscrapers topple and crumble, and on a giant screen with a great sound mix, it can honestly be said there are plenty of moments that get the blood pumping and provide thrills… at least for the first half. There does come a point where we can only see so many buildings fall over before it begins to lose some impact, though personal mileage may vary. Although the screenplay does not ask very much of its performers, dramatically-speaking, everybody in the principal cast does fine work, for the most part. Dwayne Johnson is incredibly watchable as the protagonist, and his drive to protect his family makes him a sympathetic and relatable hero. Alexandra Daddario is a strikingly beautiful young woman, but rather than let this be the character’s defining (or only) characteristic, the movie allows her to play a smart and resourceful person who’s able to keep her wits about her in the orgy of destruction that ensues. Carla Gugino and Paul Giamatti get the least to do (Giamatti feels particularly under-served in the classic Dr. Exposition role, a part that almost literally leaves him stranded on a college campus for the bulk of the running time, and which saddles him with most of the film’s more cliched dialogue), but they do as good a job as you could hope for with their characters as written. Now, potential nitpick time. I’m not a scientist, nor do I play one on TV, but I did take two years of geology in college, and I think that qualifies me to say that the supposed “science” behind the mayhem in SAN ANDREAS is pretty much nonsense. And that’s fine! Movies don’t need to adhere to all of nature’s laws as long as the movie overall is solid and entertaining enough in other areas. That said, there are some rather glaring scientific errors/goofs/improbabilities woven into the story, and though I doubt most people in the audience would ever be aware of them, it does lend the movie a much more silly quality for those of us who are even passingly familiar with the subject matter. It’s also worth noting at this point that I’m quite a fan of disaster movies, particularly the classics from the 1970s (such as THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, EARTHQUAKE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, and THE SWARM, among others), as well as those from the minor resurgence of the late 1990s (DEEP IMPACT, VOLCANO, DANTE’S PEAK, and - of course - TITANIC). How does SAN ANDREAS stack up against the pantheon of great disaster epics? Well, it’s fine spectacle, for sure; there are certainly jaw-dropping images and setpieces of colossal destruction, so purely on that level, it satisfies. It’s bigger, louder, and crazier than just about any disaster movie ever made; for example, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’s gimmick revolved around a capsized ocean liner, while SAN ANDREAS features an ocean liner getting wiped out by a giant wave as merely one small component of a much larger sequence. However, it’s lacking in the kind of stunning physical effects found in the original EARTHQUAKE, say, and that leaves SAN ANDREAS feeling a bit more soulless and less charming. The classic disaster flicks are, for the most part, great fun. SAN ANDREAS is a visceral assault, and it does get close to being tiring after a while. That said, it’s a better movie than I was expecting it to be, and if taken in the right mindset, I could see a lot of people feeling like they got their money’s worth… and perhaps then some.
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