Superheroes. Giant buildings falling down. And Dwayne Johnson. Three things that seem to sell movies these days and San Andreas, the latest big-budget Hollywood disaster flick, has at least two of those things, although by this point the former wrestling star is about the closest thing we have to Superman in the world of movies.

Johnson plays Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ray Gaines, a hard-working family man who is on the verge of a divorce from his wife Emma (Carla Gugino) and has an increasingly distant relationship with his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) as a result. After a massive Earthquake hits the San Andreas fault in California, Ray makes a daring trek across the state to rescue his daughter who is on a perilous survival journey of her own.

Directed by Brad Peyton (reuniting with Johnson after Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and written by Carlton Cuse (TV’s Lost), San Andreas is an unashamedly bold, brash, bombastic disaster blockbuster that attempts everything it can to shock and awe its audience with the sheer scale of its destruction. On that level the film is an impressive beast, with fantastic CGI when it matters (although there are certainly niggling, “smaller” moments of visual effects that are a bit dodgy), with buildings falling down and entire chunks of land collapsing inwards like there’s no tomorrow – to try and create the effect that there very well might not be one – and we thankfully get to view much of it in focus and plain to see, with far less of the shaky cam and quick cuts that so often mar blockbusters these days.

So why isn’t San Andreas more fun? It’s hard to put a finger on exactly why but, for all its CGI bells and whistles, death, destruction and general gargantuan catastrophes, it never feels real. Now that might seem silly to say in what is essentially a popcorn blockbuster and the CGI certainly doesn’t do anything to dissuade. But the film seems to be have a sense of self-importance about it that we should be caring and, indeed, believe in what’s unfolding on-screen. There’s an irritating lack of real peril throughout, strange considering the massive devastation portrayed on-screen all but guarantees that there will be from the outset.

Perhaps it comes down to the human element underneath all the annihilation, which features one-dimensional characterization, cheesy dialogue and hackneyed familial plotting ripped straight from disaster movies of years past (The Day After Tomorrow chief among them). There’s the doting father trying to save his family at all costs, the soon-to-be-ex-wife drama, the asshole new boyfriend (played by former Mr. Fantastic Ioan Gruffudd). All generic ingredients lifted straight off an unexciting shelf that actually manages to overwhelm the otherwise eye-popping visuals.

There’s a moment fairly early on where a certain character is trapped in an underground parking lot before cutting to another part of the city and story. When it finally returns to the character-in-peril, I realised I had totally forgotten about them until that point. This is a small example of the trouble the film has with making us care about its characters, shoving cack-handed family strife down our throats to the point where when it finally does come to a supposedly emotional moment, it falls entirely flat. There are a couple of moments that wink at the camera in a knowing way but for the most part the film seems naive in its belief that these are well-written characters about whom we actually care.

The performances are decent enough, with Johnson charismatic as ever as the heroic Ray, even if it he gets less to do than you might think; Gugino is a reliable presence as always and the attention-grabbing rising star Daddario does her best with a damsel in distress role, while Paul Giamatti is utterly wasted in the role of the obligatory earthquake expert. They’re perfectly capable performers saddled with lacklustre characters.

If you like your disaster movies big, loud, in-your-face and relentless in its destruction then San Andreas does its job perfectly well, putting every dollar of its $100 million budget up on-screen and showing off just what modern day CGI can achieve. I just wish there had been more attention paid to the human stuff that accompanies it because, as it stands, there’s a curious lack of empathy amid the devastation.