This disaster film is a disaster in its own right

When you boil it down (or blow it up), “San Andreas” basically conveys three points: One: Never live anywhere near the fault line of the same name in California, because apparently it’s going to massively rupture with only one person in the entire world having any idea of what’s about to happen. Two: If you already live there, and you happen to be alive at the worst possible time, make sure you stick close to a pretty girl, preferably one whose father happens to be The Rock. You won’t get saved otherwise. Other pretty girls may suffice, but there’s no guarantee. And three: If you’re responsible for saving lives, you can shrug that off to save your family instead, but only if you get to parachute into a major baseball stadium and quip jokes with your estranged wife.

If “San Andreas” had anything else to offer moviegoers, it most likely got lost in the utter nonsense that was this movie. Look, disaster films can be a lot of fun; that’s kind of the point. You see countless people suffer and die at the hands of a tornado or volcano or astroid or whatever, and yet the scrappy and clever lead almost always manages to save himself and his family, plus maybe a few stragglers. They’re generally far from believable, and that’s acceptable as long as you’re having fun.

You know who’s having fun in “San Andreas”? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. You know who’s not having fun? Everyone else. Especially all the poor idiots who happen to get swallowed whole by a yawning crack in the ground or crushed by a poorly placed block of cement.

“San Andreas,” directed by Brad Peyton (“Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore”), follows an unsurprising script: Ray Gaines (Johnson), a rescue pilot, is in the middle of divorcing his wife, Emma (Carla Gugino); he’s also planning a trip with his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) to San Francisco when, of course, plans change. A separate earthquake forces Gaines into work, so Blake travels to the city with her mother’s new boyfriend, Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd). And then, surprise: The San Andreas ruptures like a highly pressurized bag of chips, taking out a massive stretch of California and its citizens with it. Gaines then proceeds to spend the next hour flying about saving his family from one near-fatal incident to the next. Also, we learn that architects aren’t the best people in the world.

If you’ve seen one earthquake movie, you won’t be surprised with what unfolds in “San Andreas.” It’s campy and chaotic, racing from one nondescript set piece to the next. Which is really quite a shame for a movie like that, considering you can see how much fun Johnson is having. For all the calamity, there’s really not much to see here. Most of the more tense scenes take place in tight quarters, almost rendering the massive hole in the ground outside useless. And if you’re going to have such intimate spaces all the time, you’d probably be better off making sure what the actors say is a little more consequential than what flies around here.

But hey, don’t think too hard about it. Anyone working on this film surely didn’t. Instead, just enjoy watching The Rock save helpless women while his bulging frame nearly bursts his outfit wide open. For what it’s worth, there’s plenty of action and even a few scenes of “well, I’m pretty sure no one survived that” awe.

In the end, “San Andreas” isn’t going to change your opinion on disaster films. For those who love watching Mother Nature wreak havoc on an unsuspecting population of yuppies while the hero saves the day thanks to his outrageous masculinity, you could do worse. If that’s not what you consider a good time, you’re probably better off learning about the actual city of San Andreas. At least they actually struck gold there.

Two “aviation skills required to survive this disaster” stars out of five.

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