Within minutes of San Andreas kicking off, we are made aware that pacing is not going to be a priority here. Professor Paul Giamatti is visiting the Hoover Dam to try out some theories on earthquakes. Oh, this must, we muse, be a Chekovian dam over the fireplace. At some point in the next hour the unfortunate structure will be so much rubble. Hang on. What's this? Cracks are already breaking out; citizens are being flung into the Colorado River; the finale is already with us.
How on earth to you build on that? Easy. You destroy the entire state of California. The people behind San Andreas are not, of course, interested in picking off the population town by town. The dam has barely resolved itself into dust before seismic mayhem is breaking out all the way from Los Angeles to San Francisco. This is rather like beginning the 1812 overture with the cannons and leading straight into nuclear apocalypse.
“The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic,” Joseph Stalin is alleged to have said. That philosophy applies very nicely to the modern disaster movie. No other film released this summer will kill so many. Yet we are persuaded to feel that, as long as one small cadre of characters remains safe, all will be well in the world.
Rock solid The endlessly likeable Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a helicopter pilot currently divorcing his nice wife (Carla Cugino) while trying to stay on good terms with his nice daughter (Alexandra Daddario). Meanwhile, Mrs The Rock is romancing a slick architect who – like Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno – has just designed the tallest building in San Francisco. (Rock enthusiasts will be amused to note that his romantic rival goes by the name Daniel Riddick.)
Unlike the disaster movies of the 1970s, we are not treated to cameos from the entire population of The Hollywood Home for the Aged and Bewildered, but (to quote US Variety) "Aussie pop star Kylie Minogue" does turns up for an ultimately fatal rooftop lunch.
There are some mildly impressive set pieces – one hugely long take winds its way about a skyscraper's destruction – but the relentless bombast becomes far too indigestible, far too rapidly. The weightless computer-generated images never seem anything other than digitally generated. The characters make those in The Poseidon Adventure seem like the work of George Eliot.
The end of the world should be more fun than this.
