My love of the disaster genre means that I can enjoy this type of movie despite the myriad problems with it, alongside the inherent cheesiness and the poor writing which makes it laughable in places. It pales in comparison to stuff from the 1970s like THE TOWERING INFERNO and EARTHQUAKE, but it's certainly better than modern SyFy Channel and Asylum offerings, even if that's just because of the massive budget alone.
The story is written so that the disaster scenes keep occurring throughout the movie. The CGI effects work is extensive, but it's also pretty good, and certainly better than in the awful 2012. Yes, you get all the flag-waving nonsense associated with this type of film, but you also get plenty of suspense scenes and depictions of post-earthquake devastation that you don't usually get to see in the movies.
Dwayne Johnson continues to be a hulking, mildly charismatic presence in the movies, although he's no Schwarzenegger. Alexandra Daddario is there for her looks and certainly succeeds in that respect. The rest of the cast don't fare so well, with Ioan Gruffudd virtually reprising his role from SANCTUM and Paul Giamatti on autopilot, although at least we get to find out what happened to Art Parkinson (the disappearing Rickon Stark from TV's GAME OF THRONES). SAN ANDREAS is certainly undemanding entertainment, and not a film I'm in any hurry to sit through again, but compared to other offerings in this packed sub-genre, it's not THAT bad.
