Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake, The |
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USA • 1990 • 180m •
   • Directed by: Larry Elikann. • Starring: Joanna Kerns, Dan Lauria, Bonnie Bartlett, Lindsay Frost, Alan Autry, Joe Spano, Holly Fields, Brock Peters, Stephen Elliott, Robert Ginty, Clarence Gilyard Jr., Silvana Gallardo, Michael T. Weiss. • Music by: David Shire.     After a series of small tremors in Los Angeles, Dr.Clare Winslow, a local seismologist, pinpoints the exact location and time of when the long awaited earthquake--"The Big One"--will strike southern California. With this information, she must battle city officials to release this information to the general public. Also, she hopes that her family is out of harms way when the quake strikes. Subplots show how other families and people cope with the the tremors that strike before the impending "Big One."
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Review:
In spite of The Great Los Angeles Earthquake going down the same beaten path as every other disaster film, I've gotta admit that I was pleasantly surprised by it, as it did a few things a little differently. First of all, the protagonist was female (Clare Winslow, played by Joanna Kerns). That was a refreshing touch. Also, one of the protagonist's family members became an antagonist (in this case, her husband, Steve). Lastly, the movie handled the antagonists in a more realistic way than disaster movies in the past. Usually, the antagonists were either mustache twirling villains or unreasonable for no real reason. The people who go against Clare are doing so because they're either arrogant or too hung up on the "now" of economics and real estate development to care about the future.
Other things I liked about this film: the theme song was amazing and sounded very Irwin Allen-esque. I could definitely hear the homage to 1970s disaster films like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. The special effects were surprisingly good for a film that was shot on a TV budget. The earthquake scenes were incredibly well shot and had me riveted the entire time. They were even better than the special effects in Earthquake.
With that being said, The Great Los Angeles Earthquake had its flaws that kept it from being great. The side characters and their subplots were not at all interesting. I wanted to be engaged but they were pretty much cookie cutter and interchangeable. There was one death scene that was supposed to be shocking but was very predictable. There was an assassination subplot involving a South African politician that weakened the movie considerably, not because of how irrelevant it was but because it showed that the writers had a lack of faith in their own material. Too bad because The Great Los Angeles Earthquake would've been a much stronger film without this lame subplot.
Other than these flaws, The Great Los Angeles Earthquake was fairly good. Not brilliant, of course, but a lot better than you'd expect for a 1990 TV movie.
Review by atomicgirl-34996 from the Internet Movie Database.
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