Director: Brad Peyton; Screenwriter: Carlton Cuse; Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, Paul Giamatti, Kylie Minogue, Hugo Johnstone-Burt, Art Parkinson; Running time: 114 mins; Certificate: 12A
Harnessing the spirit of Irwin Allen's disaster movie classics of the '70s, San Andreas pits Dwayne Johnson against Mother Nature in a blockbuster epic that throws everything and the kitchen sink at the WWE star.
He plays Ray Gaines, an LA Fire Department first-responder who's estranged from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) after a family tragedy leaves him racked with guilt. Emma has moved on with architect Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), while daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) struggles to adjust to life without dad. Running parallel to this is Paul Giamatti as Lawrence Hayes, a seismologist who cracks technology to predict earthquakes and sees the carnage forthcoming.
San Andreas is pretty much exactly what you'd expect based on the film's trailers and promos - The Rock taking to land, sea and air in a bid to rescue his fractured family from record-breaking quakes that obliterate the West Coast.
Director Brad Peyton has all the latest cutting-edge VFX technology at his disposal to deliver some impressive set-pieces; entire cities undulate as plates shift and, in the movie's literal high-point, Johnson powers a boat over the crest of a tsunami wave. Seeing a country in ruins also takes on eerie real-life significance following the recent disaster in Nepal.
It's on-trend right now for Hollywood blockbusters to climax with a city getting obliterated in its third act, so when San Andreas spends its entirety in that world it all begins to feel a bit passé. Though initially impressive, this mass-devastation is no more chaotic or arresting than the kind we've seen recently in Man of Steel or Avengers: Age of Ultron.
In order to survive, the disaster movie needs to somehow find a way to reinvent itself, and San Andreas only manages to deliver on the tried-and-tested formula with a fresh lick of CGI paint.
The script, which made its way through half-a-dozen writers before Carlton Cuse emerged with sole credit, has a perfunctory 20-minute set-up before launching straight into the action, pinballing the characters from one pixel-powered natural disaster to another. It's all done without the kind of nudge-wink self-aware humour that makes Roland Emmerich's disaster oeuvre something of a guilty pleasure.
Johnson gives it his all when it comes to the physical side, but there's little for him to work with when it comes to character depth or emotional weight. Credit should go to Peyton and co for making Gugino and Daddario's character more than damsels in distress, but outside of them the supporting cast is just window-dressing - Giamatti is wasted in a purely expositional role, while Kylie Minogue's cameo is largely a pointless one.
It's on-trend right now for Hollywood blockbusters to climax with a city getting obliterated in its third act, so when San Andreas spends its entirety in that world it all begins to feel a bit passé.
If blockbusters are natural extensions of theme park rides - IMAX! 3D! Dolby Atmos! D-BOX! - then San Andreas could be classed as a success. Ultimately, though, this is a classic case of spectacle over story that'll largely slip from the memory the second Sia's 'California Dreamin' kicks in over the end credits. It might be more than 40 years old and have dated special effects, but The Towering Inferno is still the gold standard when it comes to the disaster genre.
