I remember seeing the previews for this film, and thought it was a Roland Emmerich film. If you aren’t familiar with his body of work, he has made essentially the modern-day disaster flick with Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012. After all, it has a big disaster going on, full of characters that you follow along the way. I knew this film was not going to be good, and it isn’t. The effects look pretty good, and the characters are pretty well-grounded, but still familiar.

The film begins with Raymond Gaines (played by the new Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) making a rescue on a helicopter. The girl he saves is not important, and is pretty much not related to the film. On this chopper are two reporters that the story follows, but there are two other characters that feel like they should have been more developed, but were not. Honestly, I think there was a whole storyline deleted from this film.

Anyway, it is revealed that the San Andreas faultline is about to shift in a major way. Paul Giamatti plays the smart guy who sees this coming, but I don’t think there is any government guy that denies him. Generally, these disaster films have this set-up, but I think it might have been left out. Thank you.

The big action opening begins when Paul Giamatti and his friend are at Hoover dam and it crumbles. This scene is done pretty well except Giamatti loses his friend in a scene that seems really overdone as his friend gets his leg stuck in rebar. Ouch, and was that really necessary.

Now, Giamatti sees the quake come, and there is a scene where he states that it will hit Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The issue is that we never see Las Vegas get hit, which reinforces my notion that Gaines’ friends were meant to have a storyline that never happened.

Also, there is a scene where Raymond Gaines is in a helicopter, and then gets a call from his ex-wife, Emma, played by Carla Gugino. Raymond is in a helicopter with his aforementioned henchmen, but in the next scene, they are gone. Did he drop them off? I don’t know, but Raymond picks up his ex-wife on top of a tall building before it crumbles.

So, Raymond and Emma are broken up, and this is an important plot point which I will explain later. They have a daughter named Blake (Alexandria Daddario) who is in San Francisco with her future potential stepfather, Daniel Riddick, played by Ioan Gruffudd. Blake calls her father, and her parents come to rescue her because apparently no one else needs Raymond’s helicopter.

Not only that, Blake is trapped in a car in a garage that is about to crumble, but is saved by her love interest and his brother. Yeah, they have names, but honestly, that is how you will remember them. By the way, Daniel ran from helping his potential step-daughter, so you know he will get his comeuppance, and I won’t reveal how.

Now, I’m going to address something that I’ve seen in all of the disaster films of Emmerich, and I never bought. It is called: the meet-up. The truth is that disasters can separate us, and these films always end with the main characters finding each other.

In Independence Day, Will Smith is separated from Vivica A. Fox, but they reunite at an Air Force base that they were supposed to meet at. It kind of makes sense that they meet. In The Day After Tomorrow, it makes sense that Dennis Quaid meets with Jake Gyllenall at the New York Public Library, as Jake waited there for him. In 2012, all the characters are going to the same place, so that makes sense.

In San Andreas, Raymond tells his daughter to go to Coit Tower, a landmark in San Francisco, and he will meet her there. Unfortunately, Blake and her new friends can’t get to Coit Tower, so they just go to “higher ground”. Oddly enough, Raymond knows that Blake is going there, in spite of not having any communication between them. Their meeting is all but coincidental and unlikely to the point of unbelievably.

Do I need to even tell you that they do meet up? Do I need to tell you that the Golden Gate bridge gets it? Doesn’t that always happen in these disaster movies?

For once, I wish I would see a film where characters attempt to find each other in a disaster setting and don’t find each other until weeks later, after cell phone towers get restored.

So, is San Andreas a good movie? No. I didn’t expect it to be, but I like disaster movies for what they are. I will say that the special effects look better than ever, but since everything is all CG, we already know how fake everything is.

Oh, by the way, Raymond has a painful backstory of losing his other daughter. This caused his separation, and if you think they end up back together by the end of the movie, then you have seen the other Emmerich movies.

By the way, this technically is an Emmerich film, as I saw Noah Emmerich’s name on the credits. I knew it!