San Andreas

If nothing else, San Andreas proves one thing: characters are important in any movie. Even if the main draw is the special effects and destruction, it still matters that we like and care about the people caught in the middle of it. Take, for instance, Michael Bay’s Armageddon, one of the disaster genre’s most frequent critical punching bags. Its lapses in science and the laws of physics are far more egregious than those in San Andreas, and the film far more headache-inducing in its level of noise and flash. And yet, the very funny cast makes it an entirely watchable experience.

The cast of San Andreas does little more than simply occupy the usual archetypes. Dwayne Johnson is the heroic Southern California rescue pilot whose record is spotless. Carla Gugino is his estranged wife in Los Angeles, and Alexandra Daddario their daughter traveling to San Francisco. There, she meets Hugo Johnstone-Burt, the completely perfect dream guy tailor-made to be her love interest, and Art Parkinson as his comic relief kid brother. And Ioan Gruffudd is the rich, selfish new significant other of Gugino’s who we know won’t make it to the credits.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Paul Giamatti is in the picture, too, as the maverick professor explaining all the earthquake science to the audience, but there isn’t even a slight attempt to tie him in to the main narrative.

You can probably connect the dots on your own, but once the shaking starts, Johnson travels across the Golden State to rescue his family be any means (and any vehicles) necessary. The rescuers always remarkably find the exact mode of transportation they need right when they need it, and all the buildings the characters need to get to for whatever reason just happen to be the only ones still standing after an earthquake that, quite literally, splits open the landscape. Such ridiculous coincidences might have been forgivable if the film were tongue-in-cheek, or if the cast would lighten things up a bit with some humor. But no, it’s always serious, even when the happenings can’t possibly be taken seriously and the dialogue is as terribly cliché-loaded as can be. Even Johnson doesn’t bring much fun to his role, which is disappointing because he’s most often such a brash and very funny personality.

Scientific and physical laws are broken frequently, which is almost a given in this type of movie. But more bothersome are the film’s lapses in moral logic. For example, Johnson’s rescue worker forsakes all the destruction happening around him to fly off and rescue his family. The story plays it so we’re supposed to root for him to succeed, but surely he could have saved more lives if he stayed and did his job where he was. Another instance is the fate of Gruffudd’s character. His demise is supposed to be a moment for the audience to applaud, but the way in which it happens also kills thousands of other people. He does some bad things in the film, but we don’t hate him that much. It’s probably pointless to ponder the morality of a disaster movie, but my brain had to do something because the picture sure wasn’t engaging me.

Even the quake effects are rather underwhelming in the grand scheme of things. Maybe there’s just so little else to the movie that they fail to awe very much. Then again, a climactic scene has a major tsunami heading towards the Golden Gate Bridge. And not only is everything obviously CGI, but the entire San Francisco Bay looks tiny. The scope is as expansive as bathtub. Whether it’s shoddy effects or just bad camera work, the film couldn’t even get one of the things everyone came to see right.