San Andreas (2015)

My late father just loved disaster movies and as a result I've developed quite a fondness for the genera as well. In his tribute my mother and I went and saw this movie and we both quite enjoyed it, it does what it set out to do and does it pretty well, an old fashioned disaster outing. That being said one of the reasons I like disaster films are their cliches, and San Andreas is a beautiful monument of cliches, I will now list as many as I can think of at this moment:

The main character Chief Raymond "Ray" Gaines (played suitably by Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) works in a field that could have relevance to the disaster (helicopter based rescue for the L.A. Fire Department) and he's really good at it (they have him conduct a teaser rescue at the beginning of the film to show just how good his character is at his job before the real action starts).  Ray has lost a family member (his daughter) and blames himself for not being able to save her (she drowned on a river rafting trip with him).  Ray doesn't like to talk about his pain, this puts stress on his marriage, so his wife Emma (Carla Gugino, who I honestly think looks even better now then she did in her twenty's) is divorcing him. 

Emma has hooked up with a rich developer dick played by Ioan Gruffudd. Ioan takes Ray's other and requisite hot daughter (Alexandra Daddario) with him to San Francisco, though he'd never 'want to replace what you and your father have'. When the (first) earthquake hits Ioan quickly proves himself useless and abandons Alexandra. Luckily Alexandra had just meet cute with aspiring young British architect Hugo Johnstone-Burt and his adorable younger brother Ollie (Art Parkinson), they manage to save her and eventually get her in contact with her dad who basically steals a helicopter and heads up to San Fran to save his surviving daughter, after first saving his estranged wife from off an office tower that is in danger of collapsing.

So there is couple A's journey to and subsequent search of San Fran for there daughter, who forms couple B with Hugo because of course they fall for each other. Ollie has a handy guide book to help in getting around the city as his brother was planing to show him the town, good thing Ollie didn't just download an App for that purpose like most every kid would do now days. Ray and Emma save a few people along the way but mostly this is about saving daughter and (as a consequence) daughters new friends, and surprise couple A's marriage. Daughter of course must end up very close to death at a point at which her father can save her, from drowning no less, in obvious reference to dead sister.

All this is not to mention the B plot of scientist (Paul Giamatti, Yea) who is obsessed with predicting earthquakes and manages to perfect his method just in time for the big one (though of course a close associate of his dies in the process, saving a little girl no less). In a slight departure its not so much that no on will listen to Dr. Giamatti as that he is cut off from being able to get the word out that Big Quake #2 is coming and will be even worse then Big Quake #1 because said Big Quake #1  has disabled most available communications. Good thing Dr. G. just happened to have a visiting reporter on hand at his lab (Archie Panjabi) when disaster struck.

So San Andreas is predictable fair holding few if any surprises, but it hits the high points of its paint by numbers structure well enough for me to enjoy it. One thing that I particularly liked about it is that it wasn't the whole world that was in danger, mostly just California, there has been a lot of disaster movie scope inflation over the years so a few mere 9. something earthquakes seem almost calm in compassion to the world wide disasters of Roland Emmerich and company. Maybe I shouldn't but I liked San Andreas for being what it is. ***

See Also: The Great Los Angles Earthquake, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, San Francisco, Volcano, Independence Day, The Poseidon Adventure, 2012, the complete works of Irwin Allen and Roland Emmerich ect. all.