Up until last week, I thought San Andreas was a film about Grand Theft Auto.
Turns out it’s a disaster movie.
That’s even better!
Movies – San Andreas Review: What’s It About?
A family full of people with giant tits (and I include The Rock in that) must fight for survival alongside a couple of English tits (the other kind) as a massive Earthquake rips through the San Andreas fault in 
California.
Meanwhile Paul Giamatti sits in a building from afar, telling us that he warned us this would happen.
Movies – San Andreas Review: Who’s In It?
Star of the show is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, who plays the All-American (and a little bit Polynesian) hero, Ray, who saves everything and everyone and is capable of expertly piloting any mode of transport. What a guy.
His wife Emma is performed by Carla Gugino and his daughter Blake is played by the ludicrously cast Alexandria Daddario.
Other actors include Mr Fantastic from the Fantastic Four (who hasn’t aged a bit), the aforementioned Paul Giamatti and – weirdly – Kylie Minogue.
Movies – San Andreas Review: How Highly Is It Rated?
Not too highly. Scores of 5/10 across the board, with imdb giving it a 6.5
Thoughts – Destruction Porn And Massive Tits, Wrapped In An American Flag
You could attempt to spend a fair bit of time analysing San Andreas, complaining about issues such as…
- The script isn’t the best thing in the world.
- The acting isn’t great either, although not especially bad.
- It’s deeply unoriginal, following a pre-set mould for pretty much all disaster movies based around a natural event.
- The character of Blake is presented as a strong, independent and clever young woman who ultimately needs the men around her to save her over and over again.
- All the two dimensionally written ‘bad people’ die while the good guys all escape without a scratch against all the odds.
- Nobody loses a tooth…because let’s face it, they probably would.
- Ultimately in spite of what is presented as the worst disaster in the history of mankind, the film ends with a shot of the American flag and the idea that everything would be ok because of…erm…USA! USA! USA! etc
But I think that if you go into a film like this and expect anything else, you’re deluded.
It is what it is; a disaster movie. You can’t expect the world’s greatest script, but you can expect to see buildings falling like dominos and cities crumbling to the ground.
Based on those expectations, San Andreas works very well.
The CGI on the whole is tremendous – although technology clearly still doesn’t allow for a convincing Photoshop on a family Polaroid – and unlike superhero movies where cities are torn apart just for the sake of an action sequence, here it has a purpose. I suppose if you live in – or are familiar with the architecture of – California and Nevada then this would look scarily accurate.
Of course it’s still just destruction porn, and there’s an argument that by being so destructive and so convincing that it has ruined disaster movies in the future. After all, what else is there to do, considering this had
The director requests that you look here. Thanks.
just about everything?
I suppose my main takeaway from watching it though was the casting.
I appreciate that Hollywood is Hollywood and that sex appeal sells, but some of the casting seemed daft.
Every woman had noticeably massive breasts, none more-so that Alexandria Daddario. But it wasn’t enough that she in particular had these breasts, the director – Brad Peyton – fixated on them. With the non stop zoom-ins on her torso as she ran, the way she just so happened to get soaking wet after she’d taken her shirt off, or the suspicious number of times he shot her from a top down angle, it’s clear why Daddario was cast. Don’t get me wrong – and my apologies for getting all Lad McLad on you – this isn’t a problem, but it’s not exactly why I would go to see this particular movie.
I think what made this stand out for me – and why I said earlier that she was ludicrously cast – is that Daddario is a 29-year-old woman, less than 14 years Johnson’s junior, who was playing what I assume – based on her character – to be a 17-year-old girl. It just looked beyond daft. Perhaps the role should have been given to someone of roughly the age she was playing, and who was maybe even slightly of the same ethnicity as her father.
Hey-ho.
Oh, and by the way, my other casting complaint was the two English boys who help Blake throughout the movie. My god those accents were annoying. Do people actually speak like that in England? I’d have loved it if they were played by two blokes from Birmingham or Glasgow, and much of the dialogue involved Blake saying “Pardon me?” to them.
Don’t pretend that wouldn’t have made it a better movie, because we all know it would.
Movies – San Andreas Review: Final Thoughts
Issues aside, San Andreas is what you would expect a disaster movie to be, and it does it well.
For its faults, it went by quickly enough, never got boring and was visually impressive throughout.
Based on that, I’d recommend it.
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