San Andreas 2015

"San Andreas" was just as big and stupid as I thought it would be. It reminded me of every other big disaster film of the last decade or so. You know, "The Day After Tomorrow", "2012", "Dante's Peak", that type of deal. But for as corny and predictable as this movie was, I was totally entertained.

Somehow, Dwayne Johnson's character was able to fly around in a rescue helicopter and actually save no one. Well, other than his wife and daughter. Anyone else caught along the entire crumbling California coast was toast, because Dwayne wasn't saving them. But then, who can blame him. He's married to Carla Gugino. I'd take the straightest line possible, too.

I found myself feeling a bit guilty for a moment or two about how much I was getting a charge out of the total carnage. Skyscrapers toppled, the ground split open and swallowed up whole suburbs and neighborhoods. And then to top if all off, look out for the Tsunami! Freighters and battleships were no match for Nature's wrath, as they were washed up over the Golden Gate bridge and into San Francisco, left hanging precariously from shattered buildings.

But Mother Nature herself was no match for The Rock. Anything in his way. Anything falling from above or falling out from under him was merely delaying his inevitable success in saving his family. It had me in stitches. I was laughing and shouting, "Hell Yeah, Dwayne!!!"

This is a classical Hollywood movie, thin plot and a lot of effects. However, this time, I quite liked it. Actually I liked it a lot. The plot, although thin, is not altogether bad, it holds together even though are quite a few unbelievable moments. However, put in the context of a traditional disaster movie, it is not bad.. Maybe this is what I like about the movie. It is really a good old fashioned disaster movie.

When I first read the blurb about this movie I was afraid that it was going to be a big apocalypse at the beginning and then it was going to be a “slow” search for Ray’s daughter. It is nothing of the kind. It has a decent build up of suspense up to quite a few more or less spectacular earth quake scenes … and then it continues. I was pretty happy that there was a decent build up from the start but I was even more happy that the initial earth wrecking event was actually not the big event.

As I wrote at the beginning, the plot is pretty thin. The special effects are not however. At least, I liked them. Not surprisingly houses a are falling over like there was no tomorrow (which for a lot of people there are not) but it is done quite well. I also liked the scenes where the earth wobbles when Ray and his wife flies over it in his chopper. I found that quite cool. There are a few moments that are, well let us say not too well thought through. For instance the classical collapsing building that collapses in the just the right pace for the heroes to do there job. The we have when Ray and his wife speeds through the waters of Los Angeles after the quake, which are riddled with trash. The amount of trash in the water would have rendered their propeller useless after a few hundred meters. But then, I think I am too much of an engineer now.

Speaking of Ray’s wife. That was one of the things I really did not like with the movie. Maybe the movie directors and actors in Hollywood are so used to divorcing all the time that they think it is a “standard” plot element and do not think twice about it but for us other “ordinary” people it is a tragedy (especially people outside of the US apparently if one should go by the trash that is spewed out from Hollywood all the time) and I really do not want to watch that crap all the time in movies and TV-shows! I was actually tempted to downgrade the movie at last a star, even two, for that crap but what the heck, it is a good movie and I do like “The Rock”.

So after, after that little outburst, I have to say that I this one was a really enjoyable movie. One of the few lately that I have watched. It is a quite good, classical, disaster movie with a good build up, really good effects and a good and happy ending (for the main characters at last) and I am a sucker for happy endings.

So I just watch "San Andreas" and I had a lot of fun watching it. It's not an amazing movie, but if you look at it closely, and yes the movie dose have it's flaws, but really what was I expecting from this movie? Well I was expecting Dwayne Johnson character saying really cheesy one liners that are bad but funny. Big cgi environments, dramatic music from every disaster movie out in the 90's, and everyone being dead serious. And I got some of that, but not the cheesy one liners, which I'm glad it's not in the movie.

Who ever says Dwayne The Rock Johnson can't act...you are right, but this guy has been acting for a while now and it's getting pretty old saying he's acting wooden, same with Arnold Schwarenegger. Both have something in common, both can't act but at least both of them have that likability to them that every time they are on screen I'm happy to see them, because they both really likable in real life. Dwayne Johnson in this movie pulls off the action hero very well and at least he had fun with the role and he didn't take it way way too seriously.

Now it comes to disaster movies you got to have good visual effect's and for the most part this movie did have good effect's. It really helped to set the scale of a big disaster and it give the action scenes that solid concrete impact that a movie like this needed.

Now for problems: When I said some of the CGI was good, well there was some noticeable and fake looking cgiat times. The opening of the movie which involves a car crashing and hanging off a deep hole in the background. Some of the effect's worked and some didn't.

The character's in the movie are so freaking dumb and I don't mean Dwayne Johnson, Paul Giamatti or Carla Gugino character's, but the supporting character's. This isn't really a spoiler for the movie, but there's a scene where Dwayne Johnson daughter (played by Alexandra Daddario), is stuck in the middle of this disaster and then she finds out about a tsunami that's on it's way due to all of the earthquake's, and what does she do? Goes into a unfinished building that's not even close to being finished, and she thinks that would save her from the tsunami. Nope, that building couldn't hold the power of a giant freaking waving that's more power then other wave (the movie made that point out about the tsunami and earthquake's) and it starts flood the whole building and soon falls over.

I got nothing against Alexandra Daddario, but she wasn't all that great in this. She kept doing that boring looking face even when this big disaster is happening around her.

Overall rating: San Adreas was an enjoyable action movie. As I said before, it's not flawless, but it's better than most disaster movies that we have gotten today. I thinking if this movie came out in the 90's this would have been a smash hit and this could have been the next "Independence Day", just think about it.