Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, Archie Panjabi, Paul Giamatti Director: Brad Peyton

    WHILE its CG-assisted depiction of a massively destructive California earthquake certainly impresses, clunky disaster thriller “San Andreas” has too many faults in other departments to add up as a satisfying big-screen entertainment.

    The very earnest human drama fits awkwardly into the action and isn’t helped by some unconvincing performances and weak dialogue.

    Near-simultaneous openings — in 2-D and converted 3-D — through Warner in Britain, the United States and most other major territories from May 27 to 29 should maximize the film’s potential in the pocket before the summer blockbuster rush, though a fast fade seems likely in the United States. Internationally, Johnson (aka The Rock), the effects and the 3-D could produce a box office haul significantly bigger than the U.S. take.

    The script, written by “Lost” showrunner Carlton Cuse, avoids the inconvenience of a story that’s all prelude and aftermath by setting the action against a “swarm” of major earthquakes, with the temblors getting more violent as they follow the famous San Andreas fault from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

    In one of three plot threads, Johnson plays square-jawed search and rescue pilot Ray Gaines, who first plucks soon-to-be-ex wife Emma (played by Carla Gugino, from the “Spy Kids” series) from a collapsing L.A. skyscraper and then sets off with her for San Francisco hoping to save the couple’s student daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario in “True Detective”). Meanwhile in Pasadena, an avuncular scientist (Paul Giamatti) tries to sound the alarm about the gathering seismic storm. And in San Francisco, Blake teams up with a dashing Brit (Australian Hugo Johnstone-Burt, from “Home and Away”) and his little brother (Ireland’s Art Parkinson, from “Game of Thrones”) and tries to survive until her parents’ rescue mission arrives.

    Reuniting Johnson with his “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” director Brad Peyton, the film delivers some decent set pieces early on, among them an exciting Hoover Dam quake scene. But the disaster footage — shot in Australia as well as in Los Angeles and San Francisco themselves — gets less effective as the story continues and goes over the top in the climactic tsunami sequence.

    The very earnest human drama fits awkwardly into the action and isn’t helped by some unconvincing performances and weak dialogue. Giamatti is wasted in his thread, which serves mostly to provide breathless scientific (perhaps pseudo-scientific) exposition for the geological mayhem.

    The family reconciliation plot plays out even more predictably than is usual for the genre, though it does provide the story with one slightly less than noble and squeaky clean character, in the shape of Emma’s rich property developer boyfriend (played by Ioan Gruffudd)

    The film is now being screened in Shenzhen.

    (SD-Agencies)