Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

shakercoola The first thing to say is the producers' intention of giving viewers the sense of a big earthquake unfolding works well. The tension builds quite well before the disaster ensues, cutting between the different seisomographic sub-plots. Although some fo the light hearted backstories do not work. Too many scenes border on the extraneous. Every disaster film needs some exposition because it's mostly about setting the audience up to care about the characters under threat or duresse later. This was not made easy with Heston's character and his marital issues and Kennedy's passive aggressive cop. Other characters like a familiar bar drunk and a sexual deviant, and pool players fighting for no reason were baffling. Some of the live action effects are iffy, but overall sound and special effects were quite good and a good score from John Williams. All in all, it's big spectacle and you don't feel short-changed about its 'A' movie pitch.

Scott LeBrun Corny characters abound in this uneven addition to the disaster film cycle of the 1970s. The city of Los Angeles is devastated, and I do mean DEVASTATED, when a quake of truly epic proportions jolts the city. Among those affected are engineer Graff (Charlton Heston), who'd rather spend his time with younger woman Denise (Genevieve Bujold) than his shrewish wife Remy (Ava Gardner), a hot headed cop named Slade (George Kennedy), Remy's dad (and Graff's boss) Royce (Lorne Greene), and daredevil motorcyclist Miles (Richard Roundtree).This viewer does understand the *need* for set-up in a movie such as this. After all, it's important to have characters we can possibly care about before inundating them with spectacle. The problem was, I *didn't* care that much for these characters. Graff, despite being an adulterer, is more engaging and substantial than some of them, and Heston does a fine job in this part. Gardner is directed to camp it up a bit too much. But most of the performances are adequate, and there is some hilarity to be found in the casting. In real life, Greene wasn't very much older than Gardner, and in truth they look like they're practically the same age, anyway. Marjoe Gortner gets a particularly amusing role as Jody, an Army reservist who turns out to be both vindictive and a creep. Victoria Principal is lovely, but it's hard to take your eyes off the priceless white womans' afro that she's obliged to wear. As could be expected for the genre, there's many familiar faces in roles big and small. Keep your eyes peeled for Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Walter Matthau (billed under his birth name), Monica Lewis, Gabriel Dell, Pedro Armendariz Jr., Lloyd Gough, John Randolph, Kip Niven, Scott Hylands, Donald Moffat, Jesse and Alan Vint, George Murdock, John Dennis, and H.B. Haggerty.Getting to the good stuff may be a slog for some audience members, but the movie *does* reward you with entertaining action sequences and some hair raising moments, as well as matte shots supervised by Albert Whitlock, a legendary expert in the medium. John Williams' score is excellent, as is the widescreen photography. After the major set piece of "Earthquake" is over, the movie gets more interesting until it delivers another whammy right near the end.As written by George Fox and "Godfather" author Mario Puzo, this isn't afraid to get grim, or have sad ends for some of its characters, and it does portray humanity at both its best and worst in times of crisis.Seven out of 10.

Ruairidh MacVeigh My main complaint with this movie is the fact that it is very, very, very slow, and there are some silly, silly decisions. I would be interested in the relationships between the characters in terms of the love interest, but sadly it's not particularly interesting and it has to be truncated by a massive natural disaster which does sort of throw things off.So what's the artichoke? Stewart Graff is a Los Angeles architect, who tires of his dead-end marriage with his argumentative and attention grubbing wife Remy. Secretly he has an affair with the widow of a friend and actress Denise, who has a young son named Corry (at this point it could be a completely different movie!). We're then introduced to a Policeman named Slade, a Daredevil named Miles, and a grocery store owner/National Guard officer named Jody. What follows are a series of quite long winded character introductions that go on for the best part of an hour, which would be okay if it weren't for the fact that it goes on for too long! Anyway, about an hour in the horrible Earthquake strikes, and sends our characters into dismay and a fight for survival as their city crumbles around them, both socially and physically.Now, the good points. The parts involving the earthquake are played very well. The practical effects involving the destruction of the city are very well done, although with the cases of obvious models taking you out of it a bit. Also, some of the characters we meet you do find yourself siding with, like George Kennedy as Officer Slade, trying to keep order and justice in a city ravaged with destruction.But as for the rest, aside from the long drawn out character moments, there are some superbly dumb moments. For example, after the earthquake has struck, they setup a temporary refugee centre in an underground car park, at a time when violent aftershocks are bound to happen! And sure enough...Also, some of the characters act stupidly too, like Slade is suspended from his job for chasing down a criminal although he leaves his department's jurisdiction. The higher ranking officials seem to have a thing for dismissing evidence of an upcoming disaster even though there's nothing to deny the fact that it's going to happen. Although these may be personal peeves, they are ones that do take you out of the movie because you can't help but notice how stupid some of these characters are.Bottom line, this movie is a fairly generic natural disaster film, but sadly laden with very slow character moments and very silly decisions that do become quite jarring. But I will say this, when the disasters do happen, the practical effects are very good and will keep you gripped, but the problem is you have to go through a lot of very slow and quite dull moments. If you can survive those, then I'd say give it a watch if you want just a silly disaster film.

JoeKarlosi For a brief time within the 1970s, so-called "disaster films" became something of a genre all their own, and the heroic Charlton Heston was often featured in most of them. This one is Heston's first, as he plays a middle-aged architect in L.A. who realizes that the types of buildings he's helped erect should have been an obvious mistake for an area plagued by regular earthquakes. He's stuck in a dead pseudo marriage with a real bitch of a wife who you'd just love to slap (the aged but once-gorgeous Ava Gardner). Her dad (BONANZA's Lorne Greene) is Heston's boss and father-in-law (hold on a second... Greene and daughter Gardner are only a few years off in age ... what, did Lorne father her when he was seven??). Anyway, Heston's character is smart enough to be openly cheating on his old battle-ax with a younger chickie pooh (Genevieve Bujold).Of course the bizarre castings are always part of the charm of these "jeopardy pictures". So we've also got side plots with Richard Roundtree as an Evel Kenieval type of motorcycle daredevil, whose partner is played by Gabriel Dell (of the old Bowery Boys comedies). George Kennedy is a lot of fun as a hot-tempered cop who gets suspended from the police force for anger management issues. Marjoe Gotner plays a nerdy supermarket cashier who becomes a crazed gun-happy National Guardsman when pressed into public crisis mode -- and he's got the hots for a young and bosomy Victoria Principal (sporting a terrible afro). Walter Matthau provides intermittent comic relief as a drunk at a bar who remains oblivious to anything that's occurring around him in this disaster.There are a few earthquakes, with the Big Rumble being one occurring mid-movie that lasts several minutes, and levels all of Los Angeles. Chuck Heston joins Lorne Greene and George Kennedy in trying to save everybody else. The special effects still are mostly impressive and deliver the goods, except for an occasional misfire (like the spattered blood in a falling elevator). The main draw of a movie such as this is the catastrophic tragedy of it all, and this is well realized even if the sub stories going on around it are mainly fodder. When EARTHQUAKE was released in theaters in 1974, a special audio trick called "Sensurround" was developed to give the effect of the movie seats rumbling as if during an actual earthquake. **1/2 out of ****