5/10

Dwayne Johnson travels up the coast in a plan to save his family during the destruction of the San Andreas Fault. In “San Andreas”, Director Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) reunites with his favorite male actor about the events that take place during the world’s biggest earthquake. During the ordeal, Ray Gaines (Johnson) has to save his family despite losing touch with them after the death of his daughter five years prior. The movie has a lot of action (Albeit CGI), and generates some touching dramatic performances from Johnson and Paul Giamatti, but it’s cliche ridden script, as well as lack of meaningful backstory, lands the movie in some safe territory that is completely opposite from the destruction it casts. The movie never takes any risks in the drama it casts towards the audience, and as a result, 100% of people who see the trailer will know how they feel about this film before they even see it. It’s just one of those kind of films that doesn’t acheive anything that you haven’t seen in the trailer, or in the hundreds of disaster films that didn’t necessarily do it better, but did originally do it so it doesn’t feel like a carbon copy. Need some examples? FINE. In the movie, Gaines deals with the death of one of his family members and is conveniently placed in the same situation by film’s end with another family member (Like “Twister”). Ray is shocked to find that his wife (played by Carla Gugino) is dating a wealthy man who turns out to be a jerk (Like “2012”). The movie’s subplot amongst the damage and ruckus going on around our protagonists is to reunite the daughter (Played by Alexandria Daddario) with her parents (Like “War of the Worlds”). I think you get my point. The best thing that the film has going for it is by far Giamatti. He is only in the film for about twenty combined minutes, but his impact is felt in a movie that is quite frankly beneath him. Paul is a constant professional who always brings the most out of his characters, and his energy breathed life into a film that was riddled with a paper thin plot. With not much backstory given before the film launches into the action, we aren’t left with a lot of reasons to care about these people. There is an attempt at this story with Ray losing his daughter, but we never really find out the crystal clear details of why he couldn’t save her despite being in the same boat with her. But who cares about character development when you can see building tumbling porn? I mentioned the CGI effects earlier, and they looked as bad as i thought they would. From afar, the effects are passable, but it’s in those close up shots of cars being rolled like dice, or buildings coming down from behind a running character that those effects literally reveal the green screen framing around our characters. It’s not quite as bad as a Sy/Fy movie of the week, but it’s not convincingly better either. One of my biggest problems in a film like this is the sheer predictability from predictions i cast before the film began. I kid you not when i say i got 100% of my predictions right about character outcomes, ways out of high tension scenarios, and even timing of the earthquakes. If people can predict this, your movie has failed before it has even started. Despite my lack of excitement from the film, i think this is a movie that people are going to love regardless. There is enough here to garner excitement from a DVD rental, and dedicated fanbases seem to support Dwayne Johnson in all of his films. This one just isn’t for me. In one word, the movie is SAFE. There’s no sizzle for a steak that is undercooked, and as a result, “San Andreas” will leave you wanting more from it’s crumbling ruins.