SAN ANDREAS

The disaster movie genre is one that has long fallen into something of a rut,not that that they can’t still be fun, but once you’ve seen one you can safely say you’ve seen them all. As an example of this let’s see if San Andreas ticks some of the common boxes. Let’s see, we have Dwayne Johnson as a single dad – check. A cowardly stepfather who fails to step up at the moment of crisis – check. An expert (Paul Giamati) who is there to stare into the camera while making dramatic statement – check. A family who reconnect through a natural disaster -check. This is not to say of course that the film isn’t enjoyable, the effects are very nicely done and there is genuine ingenuity in gradually turning San Francisco into a warped jigsaw puzzle (one of my particular favourites is a Navy warship wedged bridge-like between two buildings) and the tsunami set piece is very well done. Nor are the clichés themselves wholly without merit- although that merit may not be what the filmmakers intended. It’s difficult not to laugh (and quite a few of the audience viewed the movie did) at dialogue delivered with such patent sincerity with such ‘oh so serious’ expressions. Some of the highlights have to be Blake (Alexandra Daddario) and Ben (Hugo Johnston-Burt) sharing an out-of-nowhere, and yet still somehow completely predicable kiss. And Ray (Dwayne Johnson) and Emma (Carla Gugino) stopping in the middle of the chaos to analyse why their marriage fell apart. I suppose my main problem with San Andreas is that it takes itself far too seriously, there are moments of dry humour and cheesy puns that it really feels the film could have used more of. Final Verdict 5/10 enjoyable but it doesn’t do anything to shake up the disaster movie genre.