San Andreas – movie review

Grade: B-

I’m a firm believer that movies should be judged based on their genre. It makes no sense to compare a movie like San Andreas with something like Pitch Perfect 2, right?

The action/disaster genre, or disaster porn as I like to call it, isn’t exactly known for its riveting plots, or soulful acting. They should deliver spectacle, in 3D, with seat shaking sound effects. Bonus if the actors can just deliver their lines loud enough to be heard over the destruction in the background. Am I right?

With that said I thought San Andreas delivered a decent punch. All too often disaster movies make an effort to develop characters and a secondary plot before getting to the good stuff, not so with San Andreas, which jumped into the action early, then paused to build the characters a little before another action scene.

The acting was perfectly adequate for this genre, perhaps even better than adequate. Dwayne Johnson isn’t going to win an Oscar but he deserves more credit than he gets. Personally I think there’s a bias toward good looking, larger than life men, like Dwayne Johnson, but let’s not get into that here.

Paul Giamatti was a good choice for the lead scientist. He brought the right amount of exposition and gravitas to the movie.

The one thing that could have been better is the humor. There was a little, but a few more laughs would have gone a long way to make the movie more enjoyable.

I saw it in IMAX, because it’s hard writing notes about peetimes while wearing those 3D glasses, but I’m going back today to watch it again, just for enjoyment, in 3D. RunPee Sis saw it last night in 3D and raved about it. She wasn’t very impressed with the acting or story, but loved the 3D effects. (I’ll update this review after I’ve seen it in 3D.)

In case you were unaware users can vote to recommend seeing a movie in 3D, or not, in the RunPee app — scroll to the bottom of the Peetime Screen and look for the 3D User Poll button. With only 10 votes cast thus far 9 of them recommend seeing it in 3D.

I didn’t love everything about the movie. I know I’m being nitpicky here but there were tiny little things that really distracted me. Like near the end, there’s a scene with characters in a skyscraper that is leaning on the building across the street. This building has already been through two gigantic earthquakes, and yet there’s an apple sitting on a table. All the while the characters are going on about blah, blah, blah all I could think is, “How on earth could an apple be sitting on that table after all this?” I know what you’re thinking: this guy needs therapy. Maybe you’re right, but I swear they put that apple there just to annoy me. 🙂

Oh, and FYI, that is NOT how you do CPR. Just saying, they should have had a paramedic around to advise them.