Review Roundup: Dwayne Johnson Stars in Action Drama SAN ANDREAS

Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, and Alexandra Daddario star in the new action-drama SAN ANDREAS. SAN ANDREAS was directed by Brad Peyton, best known for JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, also starring Dwayne Johnson. The screenplay was written by Carlton Cuse and the story was written by Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore.

SAN ANDREAS follows the journey of a rescue-chopper pilot who make his way across California in search of his daughter in the AFTERMATH of a massive earthquake.

SAN ANDREAS stars Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, Archie Panjabi, and Paul Giamatti.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

A.O. Scott, The New York Times: My colleague Michael Cieply recently noted that "San Andreas," the latest in a long line of California-wrecking movies, arrives when the state is gripped by drought and environmental anxiety. The film might be a reflection of those fears, and also of the rest of the country's love-hate relationship with its most populous state. It might also express a bit of intrastate rivalry, in particular the tension between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, here represented by the larger cities most identified with them in the popular imagination. And the SoCal bias is pretty clear: Los Angeles is battered, but San Francisco is much harder hit, and it's the home base for the closest thing the movie has to a villain, a soulless incarnation of selfishness and greed. The guy who saves THE DAY is a public employee, and probably a union member. Liberal Hollywood strikes again!

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: An earthquake wipes out a fat chunk of California in San Andreas, but that's nothing compared to the destruction rained down on your brain cells by this movie's idiotically hilarious dialogue. Hell, I'm as up as the next guy for a dumb summer epic with special effects that fire up audiences to unzip and say, "Blow me." But did SAN ANDREAS have to be such a monument to stupidity? On the surface, it looks like ideal summer escapism. Tons of computer-generated mayhem and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to save what's left of the world. I stand firm in my admiration for Johnson as a top-flight action star. He's a force of nature with an appealing sense of humor that makes him eminently relatable. But Rock, please, why this? Your first teaming with director Brad Peyton on JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND impressed, well, nobody.

Andrew Barker, Variety: Of the many charges that can be levied against Brad Peyton's "San Andreas," false advertising is not one of them. The disaster pic promises nothing more than the complete CGI destruction of California as foregrounded by Dwayne Johnson's jackfruit-sized biceps, and it delivers exactly that. After providing some blissfully stupid B-movie thrills for its first hour, the film suffers from spectacle overkill (you know what's cooler than an apocalyptic earthquake? Two apocalyptic earthquakes ... and a tsunami) and a fatal lack of invention in its second, more concerned with toppling buildings one by one than ever drumming up a lick of suspense about the fates of those inside them. Still, "San Andreas" boasts an undeniable sort of pre-verbal lizard-brain appeal that should make it a strong earner, especially in territories far removed from the titular fault line.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: But between its groan-inducing human moments, SAN ANDREAS shows that sometimes the fake stuff can get the job done beautifully. I don't want to make any claims that SAN ANDREAS is a great film. It's not. But as mindless sensory barrages go, its fakery taps into something real: It shows us just how impotent we all are to control our planet. Unless, of course, you happen to be The Rock.

Justin Lowe, The Hollywood Reporter: While SAN ANDREAS won't exactly tip the Richter scale, it will clearly inject some fresh PG-13 action into theaters and could still resonate with crowds gearing up for summer vacation.

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Oblivious to both narrative logic and the laws of physics, the cliché-filled "San Andreas" doesn't nearly have the star power of earlier, better disaster movies it borrows from like "The Poseidon Adventure," "Earthquake" and "The Towering Inferno" - which featured Paul Newman as the tower's architect, a role played here by an embarrassed-looking Ioan Gruffudd (as Gugino's fiancé). All of these movies made at least a pretense at characterization, which in "San Andreas" consists pretty much entirely of Johnson and Gugino having soulful talks, while heading north, about the earlier drowning death of another daughter. But then, this is what amounts to "The Love Boat" of disaster movies.

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: "San Andreas" is a disaster - literally. That's not to take a piece out of Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. His charm and family-man-style fearlessness as the movie's star is the only saving grace in this thuddingly repetitive, badly written crash-a-thon.

Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post: Set during a record-breaking 9.6 magnitude earthquake along California's most infamous fault line, "San Andreas" is a triumph of CGI mayhem, as Los Angeles buildings topple like stacks of Jenga bricks, a tsunami threatens San Francisco Bay and a yawning chasm opens in the earth between them, as if a zipper had been drawn through Bakersfield. It's viscerally thrilling to behold, especially in 3-D. Scarier still is how stagnant the genre has gotten in every other aspect. The dialogue in "San Andreas" is lame, its plot both predictable and implausible, and the character development beside the point. Even Dwayne Johnson, that force of cinematic nature and rock-ribbed charisma, doesn't have enough charm to dig this mess of a movie out of the rubble of cliche it's buried in.

Alonso Duralde, The Wrap: There are big, loud entertainments like "Mad Max: Fury Road" that I find myself enjoying even with my critical-thinking cap on, and then there are movies like "San Andreas" that somehow go straight to my lizard brain; this movie's dumb, and its portrayal of urban devastation borders on the pornographic, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't entertained.

Brian Truitt, USA Today: Johnson does what he can with the material, though no one is helped by Carlton Cuse's ham-fisted script. Many of the lines are met with a thud, and the worst of them induce groans and laughs: When Lawrence discusses history's biggest quakes in class, one student chirps, "Do you think something like that can happen here?" Even for Rock fans and disaster-movie nerds, SAN ANDREAS is unlikely to move anyone in any real seismic way.

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