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Created Jun 12, 2015 07:59PM PST • Edited May 09, 2020 07:10PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Yes I did and I’m glad I did, saw San Andreas, in 3D and everything. Having long since become a Californian, I felt ready for its disaster movie ethos of If you love something, destroy it on the big screen.

   Fortunately, San Andreas is a consummately manipulative and charming blockbuster. Its M.O. is to juxtapose unfathomable destruction with beautiful people in tight clothing. First it head-fakes us with a terrific action sequence that presages the Big One to come. Then it lovingly pans over glamorous landmarks in L.A. and San Francisco, not to mention Hoover Dam. I love ’em all, so really dug the cinematic caresses.

   Ultimately a swarm of 9.5 quakes strike from Hoover Dam over to L.A. and on up to San Francisco. Throw in a world-historic tsunami for good measure and the movie becomes a pornographic parade of horribles, albeit with minimal gore and a happy ending. Nice blockbuster… Nice blockbuster! Nice blockbuster!!

   Of course, we know from the well-done trailers that the super-hot stars will survive. That’s part of the consummate manipulation. The fact that they’re played by three hardbodies – the supremely likable Dwayne Johnson, a lovely daughter who looks like a Victoria’s Secret model and a mother who looks like a former Victoria’s Secret model – gives us plenty of rooting interest and narrative connection.

   Hey, I understand that seeing the equivalent of 1,000 9/11s worth of destruction isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But if you love California and wryly enjoy the ethos of disaster movies, San Andreas is The Big One.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Dwayne Johnson has no superpowers in San Andreas, so I guess that’s why he’s not billed as the Rock. He’s still super-charismatic and plenty studly as a rescue-copter pilot with a shattered family life. A movie’s not worth seeing simply because he’s in it, but he’s a definite positive for any movie he is in.

   Carla Gugino plays his ex and Alexandra Daddario his daughter. One senses the casting requirement was for buxom beauties who can also act. Both women qualify. Gugino is especially impressive in a scene of terrible grief, while Daddario is almost 30, yet convincingly plays a girl who’s just about to start college.

   Supporters

   • Hugo Johnstone-Burt jumps off screen as an earnest young man who wins a dream girl’s heart.
   • Art Parkinson is cute and affecting as his squirt of a little brother.
   • Ioan Gruffudd is convincingly American as a billionaire boyfriend. Gruffudd is a Brit.
   • Archie Panjabi jumps off screen as a TV reporter.
   • Paul Giamatti ably essays a scientist who must tell everyone to be very afraid.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    San Andreas features brisk, engaging pacing right from the opening, with savvy foreshadowing. A California girl gets rescued after driving along to Taylor Swift’s Style, and we’re off!

    This most Californian of movies was largely filmed in Australia. Go figure.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    Brad Peyton is one of Dwayne Johnson’s fave directors.

12. Play OK 2.5

13. Music Great 4.0

    I love Sia’s mournful cover of California Dreaming over the closing credits.

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Countless stunning visuals, e.g.,

    • Hoover Dam roiling and then bursting
    • The Bay Bridge looking like a larger version of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
    • A tsunami taking out the Golden Gate Bridge
    • Downtown L.A. skyscrapers getting knocked down
    • Parachuting into ATT Park, shortly before it gets destroyed
    • The BoA Building getting destroyed, along with the rest of downtown San Francisco

    How’d they do all that? Partly with 100 stuntmen and 10 pilots. Also with countless FX, including a firm called Hydraulix FX, which must have been for the tsunami scenes.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.0

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Brutal 2.8

19. Rudeness Salty 1.7

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.4

    The San Andreas Fault is almost as famous as California itself. I once lived in a legendary ranch house overlooking it. We’d say to visitors “Over there is North America and over here isn’t,” as the San Andreas divides the North American Plate from the Pacific Plate. Fortunately it never opened up, not least with an incomprehensible 9.5 on the Richter scale like in San Andreas.

    Speaking of which, the geophysics of San Andreas are poppycock, as is some of the fanciful places the movie locates the fault.

    Finally, I saw San Andreas hours after hiking to the Loma Prieta Quake epicenter. It was a rocking day.

22. Circumstantial Supernatural 3.1

23. Biological Surreal 3.0

24. Physical Supernatural 4.0