Hello fellow wrestling fans and welcome to an earth shattering new edition of the At Odds with Wrestling homework. I enjoy this podcast and I’m friends with the hosts so while I don’t have my own wrestling themed podcast at the moment, I latch onto their show. One of this year’s ongoing themes is the film oeuvre of one Dwayne The Rock Johnson, and this week we watched the 2015 blockbuster, San Andreas. 

Some weeks the homework takes hours upon hours. I believe the last episode of WCW Nitro we watched spawned 8 pages worth of thoughts to come out of me. Some movies inspire MST3K levels of snark. This movie however, well, it’s a really fun movie for what aspires to be. That is, a classic disaster porn flick. Bad stuff happens that’s too big for anyone to stop or control so the only thing to do is to survive. If you’re of good moral character, you’ll also try to make sure others survive too. Stuff goes boom, people die, one bad thing after another, close calls. We had Earthquake, and Towering Inferno, and Deep Impact, and Volcano, and on and on. Show people that you give enough of a shit about that you don’t want them to die and then have everything fall apart around them. This isn’t about winning awards or great acting. This is about eating the entire giant thing of popcorn and hoping you don’t have to pee for two hours. For all of this, the Rock can say mission accomplished and I would watch this again. 

The Rock is one of the greats in the Los Angeles Fire Department and we see him taking all sorts of risks and breaking rules to save one person. That’s just the kind of guy he is. We also see how the physics are going to work in this movie because the girl that drove off the cliff should not have survived that fall. Rock to the rescue just in the nick of time. But the only thing he can’t rescue is his marriage. And his dead daughter. See, one of the Rock’s daughters drowned during a rafting trip. Rock couldn’t save her, so he saves all the people he can. He bottled up his feelings for so long his wife is divorcing him and she’s about to move in with this wealthy architect. He’s so wealthy the other daughter hangs out poolside and now we have the greatest thing the At Odds podcast has introduced to my world. My goodness, Alessandra Daddario is a pretty lady. She’s also only 14 years younger than the Rock, but plays his daughter here. Carla Gugino plays his estranged wife, and the earthquakes haven’t started, but we got another smoke show. In fact, this movie is so full of smoke that all time iconic international smoke show Kylie Minogue is only on screen for under a minute. Which is funny, because disaster movies have a history of stunt casting for very brief parts. 

The Rock is going to take daughter Blake (Daddario) to college but oh wait he gets called into work because there’s an earthquake. That’s ok – mom’s new boyfriend, Mr. Not so Fantastic will take her instead. Rock is mad at his ex, but apologizes. See, he’s a good guy. He just has trouble expressing his feelings. 

Meanwhile, known action movie star Paul Giamatti is a scientist at CalTech who explains earthquakes to the audience. He and his colleague, Dr Kim Park, figure out a way to predict earthquakes and everything goes bad for them at the Hoover Dam. Dr. Park dies, but it’s okay because he was on screen enough to sell this movie to Asian countries. 

Giamatti is back at CalTech when everything goes bad and has this will they or won’t they romance through tragedy with a TV reporter. CalTech shakes but other than the Hoover Dam, every person involved in this part of the story is pretty much in a bottle episode. They never interact with the Rock or anyone else. The room shakes and they explain why it shakes and why this is the Big One. 

Meanwhile, back to the Bloodline. Blake meets a nice guy while she’s killing time in soon to be step-dad’s building. The guy is there for an interview, and he brought his brother along for this trip to America. Both of the brothers sound like they’re fresh out of Hogwarts. They’re fun characters, you grow to care, but that accent is so thick I have to believe it’s being exaggerated. 

Stuff goes boom and the Rock’s first thought is to save his estranged wife. Not all of the other people in LA. Nor does he go to get any of his co-workers so as a team they can do something. Nope, he takes off on his own on a city owned helicopter and rescues his soon to be ex. The whole fault line is cracking and they have to save their daughter, who remember went to college with new dad and the Brits, and that is in San Francisco. 

Years ago I dated a girl that lived near San Francisco. I asked if we could go see L.A. one day. She told me that’s a six hour drive, minimum. Granted, a helicopter can get there quicker – about an hour and 15 to 30 minutes. With two to two and a half hours of fuel. Which the Rock has already burned through. I know it’s a nitpick but this one really jumped out to me. 

Blake and step dad try to leave the shaking but get stuck in a collapsing parking lot under the building. Rid Richards goes for help, but just ditches Blake in the car. The boys from Britain go back to help and the movie does a great job of making this an intense moment as they try to rescue Blake in time. Now we have our young adventurers trying to find safety as San Francisco falls apart. 

Rock and Carla have various hiccups along the way. The helicopter crashes, the earth opens up, they make enemies, they make friends. Blake is the only doomsday prepper of the bunch thanks to dad, and she makes a plan plus keeps everyone alive. Carla finds out her new man is an asshole and hopes he’s dead – which he and about a million other people will be by the end of this. 

Spoiler alert, in the end the entire family finds each other and drives off into the sunset. Or into a boat that must be running into dead bodies the entire time as it speeds through what was once the streets of San Francisco. Rock is a proud American, because there’s no where for anyone to live and no power, but someone found time to put up a flag. Rock says we’ll rebuild and I have to guess the sequel will feature America’s War on Earthquakes which for some reason involves attacking a country in the Middle East. 

But it’s fun. The effects of everything falling apart are great. The drama actually gets you. Will they survive this one? I mean yes, but there’s enough doubt to keep up the excitement throughout the movie. The most dramatic moment is wondering if Blake will survive but thankfully she’s a good swimmer with floatation devices. 

Unlike Baywatch I felt like this was a safe movie too. I’m debating rewatching it with my kid just to be boys and watch things explode and collapse for two hours. The language is fine. There’s no gore. It’s over the top. But in the end there’s a nice story of protecting your family. Unless that family is from Oakland. Two hours of a disaster movie in San Francisco and those people on the other side of the bridge can fend for themselves.