User Reviews

Very entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons. It's a natural disaster story predicated on the debunked idea that residents of the west coast of the U.S. will one day be swimming in the Pacific where their front yards used to be. Overlooking the film's goofs for the sake of artistic license becomes impossible as the nonsense keeps coming like aftershocks.

But even sillier is how this movie presents its plot-hole-infested story. Jerky camera movement is used to simulate earthquake motion. Only problem is, they used the jerky camera business even when there was no quake. Characters are all loud and annoying dimwits. The toy cars they use on the chicken-wire model "Golden Gate Bridge" scene are outrageously funny. The numbskull who runs away from a crashing tower on a bicycle. But my personal favorite is the infamous "Fault line fissure chasing a train down the tracks" sequence. It literally follows the wake of the train, even turning corners, moving just slightly faster than the train as it stalks its prey, finally swallowing it up. Then, the instant it catches its lunch, it abruptly stops. If I had laughed any harder, I would have needed to be hooked to emergency oxygen.

How to fight the quakes? Nuke the fault lines, of course. As if this premise wasn't ludicrous enough, the cartoonish CGI graphics utilized in the final sequence, along with where the advancing fissure stops (literally inches from a hero, after travelling over 100 miles), were the final straw.

A sense of humor is all that's required to watch this.

What a tragic piece of television cinema this was. When I use the word tragic, I am not referencing the events that took place in the actual story of the movie, but the way that this film was made. It was hysterical, horrendous, and pathetic to think that there were actual paychecks handed out for this project. The graphics looked like something pre-schoolers were asked to create using glue, paper mache, and their left over Hot Wheels cars. Honestly, during one of the devastating scenes in this movie, I thought that I saw Hot Wheel on the bottom of one of the cars giving me a true indication of the low production value. Let me just say that if 10.5 was a sandwich, than it would be heavy on the clichés. You could not turn away from this film for a minute for fear that you were going to miss yet another clichéd moment that has been used in nearly every disaster movie ever made. From the acting to the story and even the graphics, everything seemed like it had been done before, and 10.5 times better.

Our first image of this film sets the tone, but doesn't quite prepare us for the hilarity that will ensure further along in the movie. As we witness a biker successfully manage his way through destruction without even a scratch, our idea of reality is lost. Being able to outrun the Space Needle is sheer lunacy, and I will not go into the misleading way that they represented the Space Needle's structure (as most have in other reviews). I was laughing while this scene was happening questioning my choice of this film. Then, as if pulled from the pages of Sam Raimi's early work, we witness a train be completely eaten by the earthquake. Paper mache in full effect, it is as if it is chasing the train in this horror story styled moment that leaves so much to be desired. I couldn't tell if our characters were concerned about the tragedies that were befalling their state or the way that the director, John Lafia, represented the catastrophe with very cheap effects.

I cannot merely say that the graphics are what ruined this film, because everything was equal. The acting and the story were equally as poor giving us one of the largest (and lengthiest) television duds I have ever encountered. Beau Bridges as this sympathetic President was horrible. I could just see President Bush watching this movie at home and saying to himself, "The earthquakes hate our freedom … they are freedom-haters". I really could hear these words when I watched this film. I mentioned Bridges, but the acting was bad on all counts. The family dynamics that ironically all of our characters are fighting was a HUGE cliché that only created more implausibility to our story. Oh, our lives are horrible, but a huge disaster like an earthquake could just bring everyone closer together … let's watch and see! There was one point when I thought that John Schneider was going to break a window to a car, jump into via the window, and speed away talking about how "ain't no Boss Hog gonna git him". That would have been horrible, but at the same time semi-redeemable for this film.

Finally, I need to say to everyone that was involved in this film and for future natural disaster filmmakers, nuclear power does not solve all of our problems. I do not think we have harnessed the ability to stop Mother Nature from taking her course, and that no matter how hard we try, events will happen that will be catastrophic. We need to realize that this Earth was here long before nuclear power, long before humans, and will be long after we are gone. Sometimes I wish I could watch a film where the characters just allowed nature to take its course, and we could see the raw beauty of our world. I hated the fact that this earthquake was this evil train-eating beast that needed to be tamed. I felt that if earthquakes had a union, they would not be too pleased with their representation in this film. I was hoping for some good acting, some decent graphics, and at least a story that would spark the interest, but instead I ended up with three goose eggs.

Overall, if you can't tell already, I really disliked this film. There was no redeeming value to it at all. I remember friends and co-workers talking about this series when it was on television and how they couldn't wait to see the next part. All I can say to them is that they need to get outside more often. If 10.5 doesn't give you enough of a reason to throw your television out the window, then I don't know what will. Avoid this film like the plague, and I promise you that your overall level of life comfort will be much better. A definite Mr. Yuk sticker deserves to be placed on this film!

Grade: * out of *****

hmmm, Hollywood has labelled this a movie????? i began to watch this movie last nite on TV and i have neva seen a more pathetically acted, worse use of special effects and big waste of money! I had to turn it off because i was so embarrassed for the film makers and actors. i am a big fan of disaster movies and i know they don't have a good history of great acting and they tend to over-exaggerate consequences and i have accepted that, i usually just watch it for the effects and disaster scenes as i love anything to do with natural disasters. This movie did not satisfy any of the criteria which make a good movie for me and i would say that it was the worst movie i have ever seen but i cant as i did not see the whole of it, so i didn't see the movie in its entirety. The fact that people have rated this as 10/10 is an insult to quality film-making, as this had none of the acting, effects, directing, editing etc that make a movie "perfect". Movies like the lord of the rings,the godfather, etc in my opinion are the only ones that deserve 10/10 and even they have not achieved this according to the IMDb ratings. ----------"spoiler alert-------- There was one scene in this movie where the golden gate bridge is breaking, and cars are rolling in2 the water, and it was so painfully obvious that they had used toy cars to create the effect! this is not quality film making, if they had to use toy cars then they could have at least made them look real/lifelike.

This for me proved that this film was not worth watching so I turned it off and watched pirates of the Caribbean-now there is a 10/10 movie.

Take one really bad idea, add a group of actors that should know better, a pinch of insipid drama, mix a bit of "God Bless America" and wrap it all up with shockingly bad camera work and there you have it - the worst tele-movie ever to shake our screens. And another thing - why do all these bad disaster films have the same plot? I mean, a group of so called professionals who are grouped together for their intellect and education working for the authority on whatever disaster they face, have to battle each other and an arrogant know-it-all boss who refuses to acknowledge the opinion of his team? Until it's too late of course. Then that same boss becomes the hero by "taking one for the team" - give us a break! Factor in a sub-plot of a dysfunctional family with a precocious kid who hates their parents and there you have every other so called suspense film made in the last 20 plus years. If you really want to add pain to the viewing experience, wait for it to come out on free to air TV - then you'll know what the 10.5 means - 10 minutes of movie and 5 minutes of commercials, 10 minutes of movie.......

That was all that biker at the opening of this film had to do--that and get off the bike and run for his life. Staying on a less balanced object on a continuously shifting terrain just didn't make a heap of sense to me.

This movie made the movie "Earthquake" in the 70's appear a classic. The primary aspect that made that earlier film so gripping by comparison is it didn't throw science into its scenario ergo it's credibility is higher. The characters were also more well-rounded; there was at least one or two I actually cared for in that. It also didn't end happily and/or contain the unbelievable strokes of luck or deplorably by the numbers characters that have been littering many of Sci-Fi channels so called "orignal films". This includes but not limited to: The Hill character with the husband that wants a family, how many times that's been in their original films as well as the Mayor's ex trying to redeem himself with the brat daughter who I wanted to slap and everything comes out hokey-dorry after some trials and tribulations?

Now the Earthquake 70's film aside, it was bad on it's own merit being more predictable than usual. Nukes to end a problem came out my mouth the same time the 1st time it was said. When the quake in the near the last half hour of the film, it pops in my head, "Not the last one." And sure enough--Dang, that's the only area where I wasn't disappointed.

I honestly think NBC worked in association with the Sci-Fi Channel to create this joke.

The usual disaster movie with its host of characters with their inter-personal relationships being shown as they prepare to battle a disaster. Three earthquakes in one day in the western part of the country may be too much to take, but this is what makes for an interesting story.

The governor of California is a woman who is divorced and is in night clothes as her ex-husband and daughter go off for a camping trip.

Beau Bridges shows emotion as our nervous president. The FEMA guy is not at all like Michael Brown of the Bush Administration. Once he realizes what's going on, he literally throws himself into the solution which will cost him his life.

The problem with the film is that the characters are terribly cliché- the doctor and FEMA director, estranged as well as a surgeon and his wife.

It seems that disasters always brings out the best in people. People come together as a cohesive unit to fight off the evil elements. We've just seen so much of this before.

Every time something big and bad happens to a road, bridge, landscape, it is clearly visible that the cars are toys, the bridge is plywood and the landscape is a small patch of dirty ground behind the parking lot of the studio. A roaring see looks like a shaking bathtub. A part of California becomes an island at he end and the rift that tears the ground open looks like the graphics by a secondary school nerd.

Several reviews talk about a tsunami and the disappearance of California. I've seen no tsunami. And by the way, just a small part disappears, most of California remains, as a big island.

The characters are weird. The president is a good and smart guy who really knows what he has to do and immediately does the right thing. Male political / scientific macho's start listening to a Jody Foster-in-Contact-like woman who has weird theories, that wonderfully turn out to be true. Where the viewer would expect panic, everybody is rather calm. Where panic is completely useless, people panic in a stupid way (you really see them thinking "did I have to run this way or that way, and hey, the camera, oh my, don't look into the camera"). People are dying and are able to say the necessary last words to console relatives, and of course die instantly, right after the last word. Advisors to the president contradict themselves every other 10 minutes, and at the end it is just "yes mister president". Stereotypes everywhere. Disney-happy families. Even the girl in full puberty who does hardly anything more than screaming, moping and being negative is happy with her daddy in the end.

The wonderful female researcher has to go to the place where the next earthquake should be, or to a place where underground faults might prove her theories. She's going on survey missions that normally take weeks, but here just take a couple of hours, and she always finds what she needs to prove her theories, even though she has to run for poisonous fumes coming up from deep underground and of course she survives.

People find their lost ones, who could be in any refugee camp, but of course the lost ones are in the same camp, or in the first camp that is being searched.

FEMA is a well-oiled, effective, efficient, quick-acting and compassionate organisation, that has trained all possible scenarios. It's a bit hectic, but they really have learned their lesson after New Orleans! Wow.

At the end of the film, a solution is found. Let's use nuclear bombs to fuse the underground fault. No way it will do any damage. Nukes will fix the problem. We are wrong when we think that it will rip California from the mainland... nooooo..... 5 nukes will do the trick. But the fifth one doesn't work OK. Still, maybe it's enough. But it isn't. It really should have been 5. California drifts off and becomes an island. And people survive!

Other reviews mention the real-time display of the Richter scale earthquake force. It's going from 4,6 to 4,7, the display says so, while the earth still shakes... so it must be true. And at one point, an earthquake is even "stabilizing", yeah really, I guess at that point they had their script writer replaced by Calvin (maybe even Hobbes was writing too).

I had a few good laughs. Not at the moments that the producers expected me to, though...

Bad movie. Bad, bad movie. Stupid movie. Barf!