San Andreas

San Andreas (12A)

USA 2015 115 mins Dir: Brad Peyton Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Giamatti, Ioan Gruffudd

Less an enjoyably spirited homage to overblown disaster movies than a grotesque, digitised simulation of them, San Andreas resembles nothing less than a particularly destructive version of The Sims. For although the actors on screen are technically flesh and blood people, so lacking in believability and humanity are they that they might as well be made out of pixels. And that’s not to mention the movie’s off-puttingly casual attitude towards its own scenes of earthquake-laden chaos – but more on that in a minute.

The signs aren’t good when, in the opening sequence, a nubile young blond woman (all of the film’s female characters were presumably turned down by Michael Bay) plunges into a poorly animated CGI chasm in her car, forcing Dwayne Johnson’s beefy helicopter pilot Ray to come to her rescue. However, this is merely the craptacular entrée to what’s coming. Paul Giamatti’s scientist character (the sort who hovers around beneath Powerpoint presentations and compares everything to the Hiroshima bomb) predicts that California’s San Andreas fault is due to give away, resulting in the dreaded ‘big one’: an earthquake whose effects will even be felt on the opposite side of the USA. An investigation of earthquake activity around Nevada’s Hoover Dam leads to conclusive evidence when the entire structure collapses and gives away, one of the many scenes of rampant destruction that is oddly glossed over and never referred to again.

Meanwhile, further up the coast in San Francisco, Ray’s soon-to-be-divorced wife Emma (Carla Gugino) is, for some reason having lunch with Kylie Minogue when the devastating quake hits. Ray’s daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) is also in the city, having flown up with Emma’s sleazy new architect boyfriend Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd). How do we know he’s sleazy? Well, because he’s an architect (in other words, not a helicopter pilot) and he owns a palatial mansion. In the wake of the carnage that ends up levelling the city, Blake teams up with aspiring English architect Ben (Hugo Johnston-Burt, who’s Australian) and his younger brother Ollie (Art Parkinson), whilst Ray flies in to save the day.

These kind of broad, simplistic character archetypes have of course always been deployed in disaster movies, from classics like The Poseidon Adventure (the priest; the former swimmer) to modern blockbusters such as Independence Day (the fighter pilot; the geeky scientist). However, those movies also made you care about the characters. It’s hard to care about anyone in San Andreas when its lopsided morality has its characters behaving in peculiar ways. If Ray is a helicopter pilot, why does he set his sights on just rescuing his family? Instead of simply flying over the scenes of destruction, shouldn’t he try and help other people too? And whilst we’re on the subject, the movie’s depiction of collapsing cities is utterly flippant, at best boring and at worst disturbing. One aerial shot gliding down through collapsing skyscrapers amounts to nothing because there is no sense of the devastation being wrought upon those on the ground. It’s simply a badly animated CGI travesty, the actors responding to the green screen effects with all the emotional intensity of someone who’s received a hefty phone bill. Nor is there any sense of tension when the characters flout the laws of physics with such abandon, perhaps best embodied when Johnson pilots a boat up – yes, up – a towering tsunami, dodging a massive shipping freighter whilst doing so. Looking for a movie that makes Fast & Furious 7 seem like the work of Ken Loach? This is it.