Review of San Andreas (2015) by Dcedmonds — 30 Nov 2015

"San Andreas" 10 Scale Rating: 3.0 (Bad) ...

The Good: As expected from the trailers, the effects were well done. The scale of the destruction was amazing to see and capture the imagination. As with most disaster films, it was entertaining to see landmarks destroyed in creative ways.

The Bad: I don't expect award winning performances from big budget disaster films, but I do expect performances that are at least somewhat decent. I didn't get that here. Dwayne Johnson's undeniable charisma usually makes up for a bad film, but he was wooden and stiff here. His character was poorly written and everything about him was cliche. The rest of the cast was even worse. They tried to cram in personalities and back stories for everyone, but they felt like an afterthought and I didn't care about a single character in the film. Lastly, the film was full of comedic moments that were not meant to be comedic. In fact, every escape and "near miss" action moment caused me to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all. Epic destruction is all around, yet our leads consistently overcome impossible odds and survive unscathed. You expect and accept this from a film like this to some extent, but they took it way too far and included far too many of these laughable moments.