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Critics Consensus: The destruction of Los Angeles is always a welcome sight, but Earthquake offers little besides big actors slumming through crumbling sets.
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Critic Consensus: The destruction of Los Angeles is always a welcome sight, but Earthquake offers little besides big actors slumming through crumbling sets.
All Critics (23) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (8) | Rotten (15)
Mark Robson's Earthquake is an excellent dramatic exploitation extravaganza, combining brilliant special effects with a multi-character plot line which is surprisingly above average for this type film.
The special effects are of a high order as Los Angeles is razed, so it is unfortunate that the same intelligent attention is not extended to either script or direction.
For those who have a soft spot for calamity pictures, there's a sense of ritual cleansing afterward. And for some reason, it also made me hungry.
Registers an eight on the entertainment Richter scale.
Awful disaster movie that combined the worst elements of soap opera with special effects (bad matte paintings and the ridiculous "Sensurround")--featuring an "all-star" cast that should have stayed home and waited for a real earthquake.
One of those big-budget splashy special effects disaster movies.
Not the greatest Disaster movie of the period, but still a fairly entertaining one.
Silly plot, one-dimensional characters, but lots of stars (Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner) and some good, Oscar-winning special effects
...doesn't really hold up all that well today...
It's a disaster movie. You know what to expect.
a masterpiece of bad moviemaking.
Decent disaster fare.
Decent disaster film, Earthquake continues the tradition of disaster films that became so popular during the early 70's, except now it's an earthquake that it's the disaster, and it is a film that is quite predictable in what the filmmakers try to do. The film has a good cast, but it never realizes anything truly entertaining, and quite frankly, of all the 70's era disaster films, Earthquake is among the weaker ones, With The Poseidon Adventure being the best of the genre. I really expected more out of the film, and though it was entertaining at times, the script's reliance on genre clichés really brought this one down a bit, and the performances were surprisingly average despite some very good talent attached to the project. This film might be enjoyed by fans of other disaster films of this period, but I've seen better overall and this one just doesn't end up being anything really good. Overall it's a decent affair that could have been much better. Earthquake doesn't break new ground in the genre; it does what every other disaster film has done, and it is fairly predictable. Don't go into this film expecting a truly entertaining film, this is no different than every other genre film, but the script suffers due to a lack of real tension, and the cast here just doesn't deliver anything that stands out among other genre films. I would recommend other films in the genre such as the one I stated earlier in this review. Earthquake could have been good fun, but it simply never really delivers anything truly entertaining, and overall the cast, despite having some good name here, are simply wasted on a lacking script. Earthquake isn't horrible, but it never is a good affair either. This is the type of film that you watch when you have nothing else to watch.
Super Reviewer
Drama ensues when the big one hits L.A. in this 1974 disaster flick featuring a cornucopia of Hollywood talent of which it can be summed up with that Walter Matthau used his family name in the credits, not his screen name. Its actually not as bad as your sneer ... well, it wasn't as bad as mine was. Why are they living on a fault line anyway? I saw it on AMC.
A highly typical disaster film from the mid 70s. Like the others it has a cast of recognizable celebrities, who don't get to do much else than be normal people. It doesn't really stand out as a good movie by any means, but it isn't bad either. There is some genuine suspense in the middle of it, anyway.
By-the-numbers disaster flick. One star just for having Victoria Principal with an afro.
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