Quickie Review:
A series of small tremors on the San Andreas Fault lead to the biggest earthquake disaster in recorded history. Rescue-chopper pilot Ray (Dwayne Johnson) must venture into the middle of the aftermath to rescue his daughter (Alexandra Daddario) and ex-wife (Carla Gugino). San Andreas is visually a great cinematic disaster film. With that comes a lot of computer generated visual effects that are bit rough around the edges but deliver in setting the grand scale of the destruction. Yet the film falls into the same clichés of every disaster film ever that it becomes tiring. Burdened with overacting and forced drama San Andreas is mediocre at best.
Full Review:
The Rock fighting an earthquake? Yea sure, it's a ridiculous premise but we a have a charming actor as our hero and a plausible disaster, what could go wrong? Oh it's a carbon copy of all other movies of the same genre.
Of course a movie like this can't be done without CGI. There are few moments where you can clearly tell the actors are in front of a green screen. However, when the city wide destruction is shown the scale of it all is very well displayed. More than once my eyes widened at some surprising incident as a consequence of the earthquake. I'm not a geologist so I don't know the specifics of it all but the overall sequence of events and damage felt realistic. I enjoy Dwayne Johnson in films because he brings a lot of his charisma to whatever character he plays. He was necessary for this movie. Without his one-liners that lightened the mood, the movie would be drowning in overacting drama.
Question to Hollywood: why do we always need a divorced couple and d-bag stepfather in a disaster movie? Seriously, that can't possibly be the only way you can get the audience to relate to the main characters. Ioan Gruffund, who plays the stepfather is just in the movie to be a d-bag, who does one d-bag thing, to give Carla Gugino a d-bag boyfriend to instantly hate and fall back in love with Dwayne Johnson. This is not a spoiler, you know that's where this movie is heading in the first 10mins. To top it off the movie tries to be dramatic but it just ends up feeling like overacting. I blame the script and directing because the cast of this movie do have decent acting career that's better than what they brought here.
All in all, purely considering the genre San Andreas delivers on the big devastation sequences. Great acting is a not a requirement for a movie like this but it definitely would have brought the movie to a more entertaining level. With some managed expectations you might leave the cinema liking the movie but not loving it.
Check out more on my movie review blog The Stub Collector: http://thestubcollector.wordpress.com/
A series of small tremors on the San Andreas Fault lead to the biggest earthquake disaster in recorded history. Rescue-chopper pilot Ray (Dwayne Johnson) must venture into the middle of the aftermath to rescue his daughter (Alexandra Daddario) and ex-wife (Carla Gugino). San Andreas is visually a great cinematic disaster film. With that comes a lot of computer generated visual effects that are bit rough around the edges but deliver in setting the grand scale of the destruction. Yet the film falls into the same clichés of every disaster film ever that it becomes tiring. Burdened with overacting and forced drama San Andreas is mediocre at best.
Full Review:
The Rock fighting an earthquake? Yea sure, it's a ridiculous premise but we a have a charming actor as our hero and a plausible disaster, what could go wrong? Oh it's a carbon copy of all other movies of the same genre.
Of course a movie like this can't be done without CGI. There are few moments where you can clearly tell the actors are in front of a green screen. However, when the city wide destruction is shown the scale of it all is very well displayed. More than once my eyes widened at some surprising incident as a consequence of the earthquake. I'm not a geologist so I don't know the specifics of it all but the overall sequence of events and damage felt realistic. I enjoy Dwayne Johnson in films because he brings a lot of his charisma to whatever character he plays. He was necessary for this movie. Without his one-liners that lightened the mood, the movie would be drowning in overacting drama.
Question to Hollywood: why do we always need a divorced couple and d-bag stepfather in a disaster movie? Seriously, that can't possibly be the only way you can get the audience to relate to the main characters. Ioan Gruffund, who plays the stepfather is just in the movie to be a d-bag, who does one d-bag thing, to give Carla Gugino a d-bag boyfriend to instantly hate and fall back in love with Dwayne Johnson. This is not a spoiler, you know that's where this movie is heading in the first 10mins. To top it off the movie tries to be dramatic but it just ends up feeling like overacting. I blame the script and directing because the cast of this movie do have decent acting career that's better than what they brought here.
All in all, purely considering the genre San Andreas delivers on the big devastation sequences. Great acting is a not a requirement for a movie like this but it definitely would have brought the movie to a more entertaining level. With some managed expectations you might leave the cinema liking the movie but not loving it.
Check out more on my movie review blog The Stub Collector: http://thestubcollector.wordpress.com/