Summer movie blockbuster season is now well underway, and this weekend’s contender is San Andreas, a movie that features the destruction of large chunks of California via earthquakes instead of budget blowouts and ridiculous regulations.

It’s a wonder anyone would still try to do a classic disaster flick like San Andreas considering almost every action movie that comes out these days already features massive amounts of computer-generated destruction.  With such an emphasis being placed on spectacle in regular movies (as Simon Pegg complained), how could any movie explicitly about the obliteration of a major city hope to stand out?  For San Andreas the answer seemed to be “well, our movie will star The Rock.”

Now I like The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson) as much as the next guy, especially when he’s surprise-officiating weddings, but that’s a big lift even for him.  The guy can’t be on the screen all the time after all, so it seemed inevitable there’d be an interminable action sequence that grew more boring every second longer it went on.

Thus it was with some surprise I found San Andreas to be a remarkably immersive and enjoyable experience overall, both when The Rock was around and when he wasn’t.  Don’t get me wrong, this is still a paint-by-numbers plot with all the standard tropes you might expect from a movie like this, but San Andreas has a few things going for it that most other destruction porn sequences don’t.

First of all, the movie isn’t washed out by the same blue and brown filter that’s applied to pretty much everything else nowadays.  It largely takes place in the middle of a bright sunny day, and San Francisco (where most of the devastation occurs) looks like the actual city rather than something out of a weird alternate dimension.  That really helps sell this as a real event happening to real people rather than just some CGI cartoon.

It also helps that said CGI holds up well enough, with a few laughable exceptions, that director Brad Peyton didn’t feel compelled to obscure it with annoying camera tricks and fast edits.  Even though this is perhaps the one movie where strapping the camera to a cocaine-fueled hamster might actually make sense, Peyton takes the time to give us long, wide, steady shots throughout the film, like the one in the trailer looking down upon the California countryside as it rolls like an ocean.

Another notable feature is how unceremonious so much of it is.  Characters get introduced and promptly killed off without the slightest fanfare.  Usually these movies have so much foreshadowing that there might as well be a timer on the screen counting down to the death of a character or a destruction of a landmark.  San Andreas doesn’t totally escape that problem, but it does veer off from standard tropes just often enough to keep things interesting.

The cast has good chemistry overall too, so for once I wasn’t rooting for the earthquake. The Rock plays Ray, a former soldier turned Fire/Rescue guy who flies helicopters to airlift people out of dangerous situations.  Naturally he’s estranged from his wife, played by Carla Gugino, because of a tragedy in their lives, and they of course have a college-age daughter (Alexandra Daddario) to which he’s trying to stay connected even as the two women are about to move in with the new boyfriend, etc. etc.  You know the drill.

Paul Giamatti handles the standard science guy/exposition character, and he plays it refreshingly straight.  Sadly he doesn’t get much screen time because most of it centers on Daddario’s party which also includes her requisite love interest (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) and his kid brother (Art Parkinson).  Again they’re not an especially annoying bunch, but Giamatti is clearly the superior actor even when he doesn’t have as much to do.

All in all, San Andreas is a good thrill ride with solid special effects, characters who aren’t grating, and a fittingly epic soundtrack by Andrew Lockington.  On Ed Morrissey’s Hot Air scale, San Andreas gets a five:

• 5 – Full price ticket
• 4 – Matinee only
• 3 – Wait for Blu-Ray/DVD/PPV rental or purchase
• 2 – Watch it when it hits Netflix/cable
• 1 – Avoid at all costs

It’s entertaining enough to warrant the ticket, and really the theater is the only place that will do a movie like this justice anyway.

I would note that if you have a problem with heights, much of this movie involves looking down from tall buildings and helicopters so in that case you probably will want to steer clear or at least wait until its on TV.

San Andreas is rated PG-13 for intense disaster action and mayhem throughout, and brief strong language

(Special note: Arrow fans will no doubt enjoy the brief appearance of Colton Haynes aka Roy Harper/Arsenal as one of The Rock’s rescue crew.)