Tuesday 26 May 2015

Review: San Andreas

World of Blackout Film Review

San Andreas (3D)
Cert: 12A / 114 mins / Dir. Brad Peyton / Trailer
WoB Rating: 1/7


NO MORE STUPID, WARN MOVIE CHIEFS.
Scriptwriters' In Crisis as Reserves Run Dry


San Andreas Poster A press statement issued by Warner Bros today warned of a drought of cinematic stupidity following the release of their Summer disaster epic, SAN ANDREAS. In a Tinseltown first, the valley's major studios joined forces to trim the ineptitude from the season's tent-pole releases in order to boost Warner's earthquake movie to previously unimagined levels of face-palming. Critics and audiences had expected large amounts of idiocy from a film in which Dwayne Johnson is left in charge of a helicopter whilst half of America collapses under the weight of a clichéd script, but the studio has confirmed that the quantity of bone-headedness required by the writers and production team meant that the season's other releases have had to relinquish their share of absurd drivel. As a result, this year's average blockbuster movie will be 60% less moronic, with the worst-hit films containing almost no imbecilic qualities at all.

GRATEFUL

"We're incredibly grateful for the commitment of our colleagues right across the Hollywood studio-network that's gone into achieving this." said CEO Ian Warner, "After pooling our resources, we're mathematically certain we've made the year's stupidest film. Earthquakes, helicopters, Dwayne Johnson, fatuous scaremongering backed up by bullshit science, speedboats, the deaths of millions of people off-screen being nowhere near as important as the survival of the handful of inherently unlikeable stereotypes which the film follows, Dwayne Johnson, a script so unremittingly dense it's developed its own gravity-well, shaky-cam, screaming, someone spills their coffee, Dwayne Johnson… we never thought we'd top Into The Storm, but oh yeah, we did it."

WALKING

While the news has been favourably received by many who can now safely avoid San Andreas, not everyone is happy. Film blogger Stephen Keyboard told us "It's not like the year's other films have replaced the stupidity with subtext, meaningful dialogue or actual intelligence; they've just had the puerile elements removed, and sometimes the film doesn't have enough left to cover the gap. Mad Max, for example, should have been a gloriously incoherent montage of utter nonsense. As it stands, the movie is a beautifully filmed car chase through the desert in which everything is explained neatly, if noncommittally. It still makes little-to-no sense, of course, but without the idiocy needed to push the film through the stupid-barrier, the result is kind of boring. And how the hell can a two-hour car chase be boring? It's like the entertainment industry learned nothing from Roland Emmerich's excesses in that 2012 movie…"

DIA DE LOS

Professional film critic Roger Opinion is more optimistic. "This is great news for the films which aren't trying to be worthy Oscar-contenders, but which would usually put off more highbrow audiences with their array of explosions and ticking-countdown-timer endings. The best case example of this is Age Of Ultron; now that movie should have been monumentally dumb, but after Marvel Studios transferred 95% of the screenplay's stupidity to San Andreas, you're left with a story where a crazed robot builds a magic engine to lift an entire city into the stratosphere and drop it back down onto the Earth, and yet the film still works, somehow. That's even with the inclusion of one of the characters explaining that the film makes no sense. This type of move could bode well for the future of cinema, if we can scrape all of Hollywood's moronity into one, maybe two films a year, clearing the way for the rest of the release schedule. Although after watching Paul Blart 2, I'm wondering where all this year's comedy is being transferred. Because it doesn't look like it's gone into Spy…"

At Tuesday's press conference, Ian Warner concluded by saying "In terms of value for money, San Andreas will give viewers everything they could possibly want from a Summer blockbuster. Assuming of course that they value sheer stupidity above their money. Rest assured, Warner Bros, Village Roadshow and New Line Cinema share the public's value of imbecility. Although we value their money more. Obviously."


A representative for 20th Century Fox who asked not to be named later told us "While we were happy to help with the San Andreas project, superhero fans eagerly anticipating our reboot of Fantastic Four needn't worry too much. We made sure there was plenty of weapons-grade fuckwittedness left in the tank for that one…"



Is this film worth paying £10+ to see?
*looks over spectacles*.


Well, I don't like the cinema. Buy it, rent it, or wait for it to be on telly?
*breathes intently*.


Does this film represent the best work of the leading performer(s)?
This film represents Dwayne Johnson finally giving up.


Does the film achieve what it sets out to do?
*shrugs*.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
I… it….


Oh, and is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
I have absolutely no idea. It's basically two hours of people screaming. There could be a Wilhelm buried in there but I wouldn't have heard it because I was too busy punching myself in the head once the Hoover Dam popped like it was made of Lego during the kind of earthquake that The Scientists™ claimed they could finally predict, and yet hadn't actually predicted…


…but what's the Star Wars connection?
The film stars Carla Gugino, who appeared in the highly-questionable Sucker Punch, alongside Oscar 'Poe Dameron' Isaac from The Force Awakens.


And if I HAD to put a number on it…




DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

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