San Andreas

Yes, Canadian director Brad Peyton's San Andreas is brainless disaster porn but it is also enormous fun when it's not trying to be meaningful. The film stars Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino as estranged spouses who find themselves on a perilous trek from Los Angeles to San Francisco to find and rescue their daughter (the nubile beauty Alexandra Daddario) during an unprecedented Pacific Coast earthquake. Johnson's Ray is a hotshot L.A. rescue copter pilot. Wife Emma has just served him divorce papers and announced that she and daughter Blake are moving in with new boyfriend, real estate tycoon Daniel Riddick (Ioan Gruffudd), whose San Francisco tower will be the tallest on the West Coast (compensate much?). It's then that Ray's world starts to fall apart, literally, as the earth begins to shift and buildings start collapsing. Paul Giamatti has a choice part as a Cal Tech seismologist whose equations and gadgetry have predicted just such an occurrence but his warnings have gone unheeded. The scenes of devastation -- the demolition of the Hoover Dam, the swallowing of L.A. and the drowning of San Francisco -- are so over-the-top that they are funnier than Peyton probably intended. Along for the joy ride are a comely British lad, played by Hugo Johnstone-Burt, and his cheeky younger brother Ollie (young Art Parkinson), who take a shining to the busty Blake and end up hiking the the even crookeder streets of San Francisco with her. If watching Mother Nature kick ass is your cup of tea, San Andreas is for you. Faults and all. Recommended.