After a cast member from Baywatch fracks Los Angeles, the city is threatened by unconvincing earthquakes in this dreadful adventure film.
As miners do some activities vaguely reminiscent of fracking, they utter the phrases, “Move it!”, “Let’s Go!”, “Whoa!”, “Come on!”, and “We punctured the crust.”. Meanwhile, a group of bikini-clad partiers in a crowded penthouse hot tub unconvincingly plummet to their doom without their champagne into a Los Angeles canyon after a minor temblor. Also, a beach eats a surfer alive, and not a moment too soon. After the candy from a piñata is shown in closeup, Los Angeles is evacuated, but I don’t think those two things are related.
As palm trees sway ominously, a guy at the top of a dead palm tree with a chainsaw does something, but it’s not very important to the plot. Unconvincing explosions happen, and buildings unconvincingly crumble, and it’s important to the plot, but that doesn’t mean it’s especially compelling. The film crew is reflected in the bumper of an SUV carrying 5 insufferable teens, and it’s sort of like a douchey version of the Breakfast Club, only with earthquakes and continuity errors.
Suddenly, Charles Deetz from Beetlejuice says the phrase ‘fudge nuggets’, and I don’t think he’s talking about a dessert. Someone then unconvincingly loses a cell-phone in the bed of a moving pickup truck as it’s escaping unconvincing fissures in that Los Angeles reservoir that’s in every single movie, which prompts an unconvincing climb outside the moving pickup to retrieve it. Elsewhere, a hapless tour bus guide attempts to make a joke and fails miserably, and I wonder if that’s how the screenwriter of this film felt, as the Capitol Records building crushes the tour bus.
Suddenly, someone says the phrase ‘shark hurricane’. I’m pretty sure why, but they probably shouldn’t have.
The film-makers wisely decide to add a shot of the skyline of Los Angeles in darkness, the tops of skyscrapers engulfed in flames, and it’s a moment in 10.0 Earthquake where I didn’t try throw my TV out the window.
But then two of the douchey teens have cringe-inducing, fully-clothed sex in a cave, then they’re impaled by a stalactite, then someone says the phrase, “You bet your sweet babookie”, and I’m not sure what that is. More things explode, then there’s a not-particularly-spectacular stunt as the guy from Baywatch takes off his shirt, a spectacular stunt by the golden retriever as he leaps into a helicopter, and then the movie ends, and not a moment too soon.
10.0 Earthquake is pretty awful. It attempts to be humorous and fails, and isn’t funny enough in its ineptitude. Red Bull-chugging Jeffrey Jones plays an eccentric scientist, and he’s arguably the worst part of the film. David Chokachi plays a villainous businessman, and he’s arguably the worst part of the film. The rest of the cast plays parts in the film, and they’re arguably the worst part of the film. Probably the best actor in the film is a golden retriever, who hits his marks, looks worriedly into the distance, barks his lines in an effective, natural manner, and after his hunter companion is shot with a rifle, flees the scene, which is probably what his agent should have told him to do when he was offered the role.
I’m not going so far as to recommend 10.0 Earthquake if you like stuff that sucks, but I wouldn’t stop you from watching it.
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