‘San Andreas’ Review Roundup: The Rock’s Latest Action Flick Gets Mediocre Reviews

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson returns to the big screen in San Andreas, a disaster movie that sees an earthquake level Los Angeles.

In San Andreas, Johnson plays Los Angeles Fire Department rescue chief Ray Gaines. His main mission after the earthquake hits is to save his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) and his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario). Meanwhile, a Cal Tech professor and seismologist played by Paul Giamatti tries to save the rest of the city by urging people to run.

San Andreas Reviews

Per critics reviews of the film San Andreas – directed by Brad Peyton – it’s more or less what you’d expect from a summer blockbuster starring The Rock. Action stunts performed by the WWE superstar in front of a backdrop of impressive graphics are the pull; the dialogue is clunky, but it’s not meant to be much more than that.

“The film is not, when taken in the right spirit, un-fun, though getting in that right (derisive, camp) spirit requires desensitizing yourself to the possibility that the horrors you’re watching bear any relation to anything that could actually happen…. There are things in San Andreas that no one would have dreamed of seeing 40 years ago, when Earthquake (with its tacky, plaster-cracking “Sensurround”) represented the state of the art. But nothing means anything. The spectacle feels less earned than Dwayne Johnson’s biceps, which are ludicrous but not hollow.” – David Edelstein, Vulture

“At its core there’s an endearing earnestness to the movie and the way it adheres to its formula and genre conventions. It makes a point to show the Hollywood sign turn to rubble, but it is every bit an old-school Hollywood disaster picture. You can be cynical about “San Andreas,” but the movie plays it totally straight, and it’s hard not to sit back and let it rock you. There is a crassness to the way the film appropriates 9/11-like imagery, especially in the flag-waving closing moments, but “San Andreas” never pretends to be any less subtle than the Rock’s physique. It’s a hulking mass of wanton destruction, and a stupid-fun carnival of carnage.” – Adam Graham, The Detroit News

Despite nearly two hours of loss of life and property, catastrophe, calamity, and clichés, San Andreas is awesome fun. Director Brad Peyton and his army of visual effects and digital artists have created a temblor tableau of wreckage in motion – L.A. high-rises swaying as they’re designed to when the ground starts to rumble and heave, but then disintegrating in horrific piles of concrete, steel, and glass as the stress gets too much. […] Johnson, with a distinguished CV of Fast & Furiouses, crime, sci-fi, and historic action pics, is proving to be quite the actor.” – Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

 San Andreas is currently in wide release.