12 Best Natural Disaster Movies Of All Time

It is simply impossible to dislike a film where the man formally known as The Rock takes on an Earthquake- and wins. This film is great dumb fun from start to finish, especially in the initial scenes when the tremors occur. There is clunky acting and even clunkier dialogue, but Dwayne Johnson's charisma rights every wrong turn.

San Andreas embraces every disaster movie cliche, with all the nasty and mean people dying, cute males and females meeting and falling in love and previously divorced couples reacquainting themselves after the new lover dies.

The film is also an interesting retrospective of action films pre metoo, with the trope of the attractive lady lead having clothing that gets wetter, tighter and shorter as the film progresses. It is a tired old sexist trope that appears(hopefully) to be banished for the scrapheap, but may be one that is analysed by film studies students of the future.

The special effects are first rate even if some of the scenarios are ridiculous, Dwayne Johnson's Ray coming across as part strongman, part James Bond. There is always a sense visually of a city being destroyed before our eyes, but the mood is always light in tone. Because the one thing we don't want in our big dumb action movies is a sense that we can't enjoy ourselves, and thankfully this film always knows what kind of film it is.