Movie Review: 'San Andreas'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- That the special effects in San Andreas are state-of-the-art impressive is obvious. But to say that they're the tail that wags this particular dog is to severely understate the case.
San Andreas is an action-adventure disaster thriller about a devastating California earthquake (well above 9.0) during which the titular fault gives.
But the film also measures nose-bleed high on the "showin'-off-your-effects" scale, in a movie in which CGI comes to stand for "Carnage Gone Inconsequential."
In a movie in which we're supposed to be bemoaning the plight of the people on screen rather than applauding the whiz-bang mastery of the technicians, something is very much out of whack.
Which is why the phrase "disaster porn" begins to rear its ugly head.
Dwayne Johnson, who has come out from under The Rock to become a go-to Hollywood icon in the adventure realm, plays Ray Gaines, a Los Angeles Fire Department chopper pilot specializing in search-and-rescue who, in the massive quake's aftermath, with everyone bracing for the inevitable aftershocks, undertakes the dangerous journey across the state, from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
He's accompanied by his soon-to-be ex-wife, played by Carla Gugino, with whom he's going through divorce proceedings, in an attempt to rescue their resourceful daughter, Blake, played by Alexandra Daddario.
Meanwhile, Paul Giamatti plays a seismologist at Cal Tech who has long since predicted this dire occurrence and warned of it to no avail.
Undertaking his first non-sequel, director Brad Peyton -- who directed Johnson in the sequel Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and was also at the helm of another sequel, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore –- doesn't try to reinvent the wheel or present his film as anything other than what it is: a shallow spectacle parading its visual effects.
But what Peyton and his colleagues forget is that when the level of destruction, devastation, and death is this extensive (and we do, after all, witness the virtual obliteration of both LA and San Fran) and the body count is this high, we begin to feel guilty even rooting for the one fractured family the film is focused on when so many others are dying around them.
As Humphrey Bogart reminded us in Casablanca, "Sometimes the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."
Well, welcome to San Andreas, which can't help but also be a cautionary tale as well, can't help but put us in mind of 9/11, and can't help but wear out its wow-whee welcome.
The screenplay by Carlton Cuse, based on a story by Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio, hangs its hat on this fractured family as the film's emotional through-line while it fractures thousands of other faceless families like so many discarded toys.
Johnson and Gugino hang in there despite nearly being buried under an avalanche of clichés that sometimes verge on self-parody.
San Andreas registers as part of the subgenre of California earthquake flicks that includes San Francisco (1936) and Earthquake (1974). But it seems to have taken a giant step backward from its predecessors despite boasting cutting-edge visual effects.
So we'll rescue 2 stars out of 4. Who shall we blame for this latest reminder that technical razzle-dazzle will only take you so far?
It's San Andreas's fault.