Released: 2015
Genre: Action
IMDB Rating: 6.2 / 10
I love mindless disaster movies. I think I’m one of maybe seven people who can honestly say that they enjoyed 2012 when it came out. What makes San Andreas so much fun is that nobody in it can act, there’s no way that any one human being could survive the amount of shit that gets thrown at Dwayne Johnson’s character, and because it was filmed in 3D there were so many unnecessary things trying to fly out of my 2D TV. It’s one of the most highly entertaining dumb movies I’ve seen in ages.
Hair and disaster on fleek.
The Plot
It’s always occurred to me that the vast majority of North America should be declared unsuitable for human habitation (the San Andreas fault to the West, hurricanes to the East, frozen tundra to the North, and tornadoes sweeping right through the middle). Seismologists Lawrence Hayes and Dr. Kim Park would agree with my assessment given that they just discovered an unknown fault line that destroys the Hoover Dam. And when destroying the Hoover Dam is a movie’s opening disaster, you know things are going to get rough.
Ray Gaines, an air rescue pilot, is called away from driving his unnaturally blue-eyed daughter Blake to college to help attend to the disaster. While preparing for this a large chunk of North America decides that it wants to divorce the rest of the continent and the San Andreas fault goes off, triggering a massive 9.1 earthquake that quickly reeks havoc for as far as the fault runs.
The destruction is unbelievable, and among the casualties of this terrible tragedy is every gay man on Earth as Kylie Minogue accidentally opens a door to a room that isn’t there anymore and tumbles off the side of a building. This doesn’t particularly effect Ray in any way, who is much more focused on getting into San Francisco to save Blake, who has survived the initial earthquake but is now right in the path of the secondary 9.6 earthquake that’s about to strike the city. With nothing to rely on but his massive arms and ability to fly any piece of aeronautical equipment known to man, Ray will need to tell Mother Nature to go shove it while he saves his daughter and reconciles during a free-fall exercise with his ex-wife.
The Golden Gate Bridge places 2nd in the list of unlucky American landmarks, right after the Statue of Liberty.
The Visuals
The great thing about movies like this is that they’re the cinematic equivalent of a bunch of guys trying to show off that they have the biggest dick. San Andreas had the money it needed, so you’re going to get ALL the disaster! Want a tsunami? You get one. Feel like seeing a few buildings crash down on top of one another? You can have your few buildings and then a few hundred more. But why settle there? Not when you can blow up most the western coast of the USA in truly spectacular and debris-flying fashion!
If sheer action, pulse-pounding silliness and unwonted destruction are what you came to see then you’re going to leave this movie feeling very happy for your choice.
Trump’s backup plan if the wall along the Mexican border doesn’t work out.
The Feelings
This was just an absolute barrel of laughs and fun.
I love these kinds of movies because they are completely mindless. You don’t want to see Dwayne Johnson giving an Oscar-worthy performance (and trust me, he doesn’t) – you want to see whether he can string a few coherent lines together and place bets on whether that skin-tight shirt is going to be able to hold itself together until the end of the movie. You want to see young women with frighteningly blue eyes know shit unconvincingly. You want to witness entire cosy, boho-chic neighbourhoods being thrown up into the sky. You want to be there when tiny yachts laugh in the face of danger as they attempt to climb a massive wall of incoming water. And most of all, you want to see that one douchebag get his comeuppance when the Universe eventually decides that it isn’t going to take his shit anymore.
San Andreas is a brilliant movie for what it sets out to do in that its serious in its madness and mayhem and has the gigantic budget necessary to pull it all together. If you like to see a lot of shit get broken, then this is the movie for you!
My Final Rating: 8 / 10
Buy San Andreas at Amazon.com
TRAILER
A World of Weird 