Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino (Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures)
You can time a hard-boiled egg to the disaster movie beats charted out in San Andreas, director Brad Peyton’s thoroughly ridiculous but highly entertaining blockbuster. Its good guys are all good, its bad guys (including Kylie Minogue) are all bad and meet the proper demise.
Peyton is the auteur behind Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, whose marquee villainess is voiced by Bette Midler. For many viewers, the fact that the previous highlight of Peyton’s C.V. was a talking animal movie (whose voice talent includes Nick Nolte, no less) would be a big red flag with droopy eyes. His is the career of a journeyman happy to sublimate personal expression and simply fill in the blanks of a well-worn template.
But what a template.
San Andreas immerses you in mother earth’s gaping maw from its first scene. On a winding mountain road in California, a ditzy blonde takes her eye off a treacherous curve to look for a water bottle in her purse; you wince, awaiting her comeuppance, but a car speeds past her and disaster is averted. Then she gets a text—this disaster movie makes the most of cell phones until the quake knocks out transmission towers—yet she remains unscathed. Finally, her SUV goes off the side of the mountain when an avalanche lets loose its rocky hounds upon her.
Here comes the natural stone formation known as Dwayne Johnson to the rescue. The Rock plays rescue-chopper pilot Ray, who tells a TV reporter (Archie Panjabi) embedded with his team that he’s been on hundreds of rescue missions. The reporter oohs in admiration, but Ray modestly barks, “It’s my job,” much like it’s Johnson job to be a steady superhuman figure with the occasional human feeling and terrible script.
Ray’s backstory is so clichéd that its sad tale of a broken family almost comes off as satire. He’s talking to his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) on the phone when he picks up an ominous looking piece of mail. A flicker of emotion passes over Johnson’s rocky features as he opens the envelope, trying not to let his daughter in on his inner pain. When he gets off the phone, the camera lets us in on his mail: divorce papers. Ray’s ex Emma (Carla Gugino) is about to move in with her boyfriend Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), who turns out to be the most vanilla of bad guys, a clear nod to the banality of evil.
Art Parkinson, Alexandra Daddario and Hugo Johnstone-Burt (Jasin Boland/Warner Bros. Pictures)Blake wants her parents to get back together. You think they will? I won’t spoil it for you!
San Andreas hits the most obvious of marks, but that’s not a bad thing. Despite and maybe because of its familiar clichés, rescue sequences are nail-bitingly tense and kind of hilarious. When the first quake hits Hoover Dam, seismologist Lawrence (the professorial Paul Giamatti) coaxes his colleague Dr. Park (token Asian Will Yun Lee) to run up to the safety barriers, but the sacrificial scientist stops to pick up a crying little girl. Dr. Park runs with the child and throws her across the barrier to Lawrence just before fate and the earth takes him.
The filmmakers reportedly ignored the scientific guidance offered to them—a quake along the San Andreas fault would not actually cause the tsunami that swallows San Francisco. But then you wouldn’t have the touching image of an elderly couple walking along the pier; they see a passenger ship hurtling towards them, exchange a poignant look, and hold on to each other till death and bad science do them part.
The script has plenty of plot holes. On the way to Nob Hill, Blake, her love interest Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt), and his smart alecky little brother Ollie (Art Parkinson) happen upon an abandoned fire engine and raid it for supplies. But you’d sort of think emergency crews would be using every vehicle available to them. Ray essentially ignores dispatch orders so he can concentrate on saving and repairing his broken family.
Yet the earth rubs its tectonic plates together real good, and even if you can see the end coming, it’s a helluva ride getting there. San Andreas is a predictable, familiar disaster movie spectacle. It may not be a good movie, but it’s awesome summer fun.
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San Andreas
Directed by Brad Peyton
Written by Carlton Cuse
With Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario
Rated PG-13 for intense disaster action and mayhem throughout, brief strong language and oh all the ouchies!
Running time 114 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you.
