Remember Clark Gable searching for Jeanette Macdonald in 1906? Lana Turner struggling to avoid falling trees in exotic settings in two different movies? Charleston Heston and Ava Gardner struggling to find a way out of collapsed skyscrapers? Even Superman reversing a quake. Now those had moments of tension that were gripping and nail biting, but it was all about survival and helping others cope and nothing more. Along came the modern disaster movie which took basically the same synopsis and plugged in different names, different types of natural cataclysmic horrors and shoving it all around an estranged or separated family determined to get back together no matter what the cause.

This surrounds the heroic Dwayne Johnson, aka "The Rock", having him and his ex-wife in a helicopter flying from L.A. to S.F. to rescue their daughter after his ex-wife Carla Gugino's boyfriend abandoned her, leaving her with a foppish British lad and his pesky younger brother. This was acceptable in "Dante's Peak", silly but tolerable in "The Day After Tomorrow" and eye- rolling and outlandish in "2012". If you thought that the exploding freeways and the collapsing buildings threatening the family driving and later flying through it, wait until you see ex-wife jumping up on collapsing debris to get to the Rock's helicopter.

I had a feeling of the mentality of this movie with the opening of a twit- wit girl, not paying attention while driving through the San Gabriel mountains, looking back to grab a bottle of water and her phone (of course) and going over a cliff hundreds of feet because of rocks falling from a smaller quake, and surviving barely getting dirt on her face. How could the creators of this not realize what a disaster they had on their hands, maybe not in box office dollars (you could sell the Hoover dam to these types of movie audiences) but in critical pans. Blame "Titanic" for starting this wave of formula films that in retrospective just didn't know where to stop.

Certainly watchable, this is beyond flawed and outlandish in so many ways. Computer generated effects and ear blasting dramatic music just intensify how over the top. As tragic as the real thing would be, there is no way that these characters would survive any of these intense situations. It's all too much, too repetitive, too dark and after a while, it is obvious what is going to happen. I can only watch so many of these movies, not just because of their absurdities, but because of the grim future they predict, and, I'm sorry. That ain't entertainment.

San Andreas is a big dumb disaster action film but it is entertaining enough with some good special effects.

The Rock plays a rescue pilot and a brave one as we see in the beginning. However he is soon to be divorced, as his ex has found a millionaire property magnate, he also cannot get over the death of his other child.

When the big quake strikes, The Rock springs into action, despite all the chaos he rescues his wife from the top of a collapsing building and then goes looking for his daughter, abandoned by her mother's boyfriend and aided by two random British kids she just met.

Never mind other people who are injured or needs rescuing, the Rock only has his family in mind and he will commandeer any vehicle he can get his hands on.

The rest of the cast are underwritten such as Paul Giamatti's seismologist doing his best to warn others.

A popcorn film that you will see once and that is it. However how many times will we see The Golden Gate Bridge being destroyed though?

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.