San Andreas

Released:  May 29^th, 2015

Rated:  PG-13

Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Starring:  Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Art Parkinson, Paul Giamatti, Archie Panjabi

Directed by:  Brad Peyton        

Written by:  Carlton Cuse

Personal Bias Alert:  expected a lot of cheese, tired of seeing the Golden Gate Bridge destroyed

6.5 of 10

            From the opening frame, San Andreas nods assuredly at the audience and delivers what people came for.  It takes mere seconds for big, dumb danger to race to the forefront, and the sequence that follows hits you with goofy dialogue, implausible action, and Dwayne Johnson saving the day.  This down and dirty approach works in disaster films, especially when the filmmakers are smart enough to minimize plot and character, providing audiences with fleeting thrills at a much cheaper rate than their local theme park.

            San Andreas is, of course, named after the San Andreas Fault, a tectonic boundary running through the west coast of the US that is prone to large earthquakes.  Paul Giamatti’s Lawrence, a seismologist, gives a rundown of the history and the devastating effects of such quakes early on so you don’t have to rely on your memories of middle school geology.  Lawrence pops in throughout the film to give helpful explanations of just what’s coming, but most of the film focuses on the family of Johnson’s Ray as they try to find each other during the largest recorded earthquake in human history (because what’s the point of a disaster movie if you’re not destroying things at ridiculously epic proportions).

            And destroy things it does, with a CGI triple whammy of LA, San Francisco, and the Hoover Dam getting the shakes.  These three spots give the film plenty of famous landmarks to crumble, and the spacing of these and the rest of the action sequences are the film’s strongest aspect.  They’re close without being too close, maintaining tension and suspense without getting numbing.  The brief interludes are filled in with material that variously does and doesn’t work, but the scale tips just towards working.  Giamatti is used sparingly, but his weathered delivery of portentous lines bounces well off of Archie Panjabi’s stoic reporter.  However, the strongest pauses belong to the young threesome played by Alexandra Daddario, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, and Art Parkinson.  They’re trying to survive the epicenter that is San Francisco, all while Daddario and Johnstone-Burt strike up a surprisingly easy and genuine-feeling romance.  Parkinson is relegated to the little brother tag along, but even he gets what might be the funniest line in the movie.

What doesn’t work as well is the interludes with Johnson’s Ray and Gugino’s Emma, who are trying to get to their daughter (Daddario) while awkwardly bickering about their failed marriage.  It suffers from the insertion of an unnecessary plot point that doesn’t have enough time to be fleshed out and never adds much to the story.  The rest of the plot is intelligently small in scale, focusing on a group of basic but likable characters who let the big action take the forefront.  Too much plot is often a killer in disaster films, grinding the tension to a halt while characters chat about problems that are inconsequential compared to the grand things going on around them.  Ray and Emma’s exchanges often start the gears grinding, but they thankfully never bring the thing to a complete halt.

What’s most disappointing are the times when the CGI budget fails to render director Brad Peyton’s vision.  San Andreas worked with about half the budget of many modern summer blockbusters, but its destruction scale far surpasses most of these films.  This means that Peyton had to rely on lots CGI, and even with that budget concession there are still shots that were obviously a low priority.  There’s the occasional rubbery people and crumbling debris that fall with entirely the wrong amount of weight, but in the film’s defense, most of the sequences seem breathtakingly real, otherwise the film wouldn’t hold together.

No one will come out of San Andreas touting its labyrinthine plot and deep characters, but anyone expecting these things from it must not live in the same world as the rest of us.  The film just wants to give you some thrills and a bit of spectacle, which it delivers in a well-paced, agreeable package.  And then The Rock skydives out of a plane.

Other Notes (Ridiculous Disaster Version)

Ø  There’s a lot of ample-chested women running in bras that aren’t made for running.

Ø  I feel like the laws of physics wouldn’t have allowed them to get over that tsunami wave.

Ø  Why does Ray know how to drive everything?

Ø  How do your legs get stuck by debris without injury or at least a tear in your jeans?

Other Notes (Regular Version)

Ø  Archie Panjabi!

Ø  I appreciate that the main characters, particularly the women, knew what to do and weren’t putting themselves in unnecessary danger.

Ø  No, this is not a movie version of the Grand Theft Auto game.