Dissecting Kylie Minogue's Cameo in San Andreas

Astute readers of Cinema Romantico may have noted that in our review of “San Andreas” we failed to mention the appearance of our beloved pop siren Kylie Minogue, whose role we had speculated over, much to the chagrin of loyal & frustrated followers, for months and months. That’s because we didn’t want our devotion to Ms. Minogue to cloud our judgment of the film’s merit, which we ultimately found considerable. Still, we felt our loyal & frustrated followers were owed some insight into Ms. Minogue’s place in the “San Andreas” universe.

This is not Kylie Minogue in San Andreas. But it is Kylie Minogue. Isn't she the greatest?

We considered a deep dive into her, roughly, 65 second appearance, but Joey Nolfi at Serving Cinema has already got you covered in this “Heartfelt Account of Kylie Minogue’s ‘San Andreas’ Role.” I encourage you to read it, if for no other reason than Mr. Nolfi calls her “Universal Empress Minogue” which, like, hell yeah. But he also gets to the heart of the role. As Susan Riddick, the sister of Ioan Gruffurd’s character, who essentially passes for the film’s human version of a villain, she is lunching with Carla Gugino’s Emma, who is on the verge of marrying Gruffurd, maybe. Of Kylie's character Nolfi writes that it’s a “one-note characterization that sees her insulting Emma’s deceased daughter (‘didn’t your daughter, like, drown or something?’) with the air of one thousand yachts and elevendy-million dollar bills fanning the flames of her verbal breath of bitchery, all while physically channeling the aura of Deborah Norville circa 1998.” Not inaccurate. In fact, Wesley Morris at Grantland also employs bitch to describe the turn – as in, “an icy bitch played by Kylie Minogue, who’s having a good time giving a terrible performance.” Terrible? Well yeah, but in that “Nurse Betty” kind of way, like she’s Rachel Dennis in “Central Park West.” It’s to Kylie’s credit that she makes an impression when she’s barely there.

Because it’s Andrew O’Hehir writing at Salon who’s really got Universal Empress Minogue figured. He writes: “…and I’m sorry we don’t see more of Kylie Minogue in a teensy, bitchy cameo that threatens to eat the whole movie.” Yes. It does. It suggests a whole different film. It suggests a film where a Jackie Q-ish diva is made to ride along in the back of Bill & Jo’s pickup truck in “Twister” rather than Jami Gertz. And O.M.F.G. I want to see that movie more than “The Force Awakens.” “San Andreas” really only gets tongue-in-cheeky in Paul Giamatti's performance and Kylie could have drowned the entire movie in tongue-in-cheek grown-up mean girl salad dressing. Yet, Brad Peyton understood that wasn’t the movie he wanted to make. He wanted a lean, mean delivery device for action adrenaline. To create it, he needed to offload Susan Riddick whose frigidly hoity-toity vixen simply would have overburdened the nimble narrative. And so, Susan, panicked, shoves Emma aside and runs like a hell for a door, screaming “Get Outta My Way!”, that she apparently falls out of because when Emma opens that same door moments later, well, it looks out at where the rest of the building used to be. “(It’s) nothing more than a cameo that’ll likely end in pain and misery for those who love her,” Nolfi writes.

I see his point. I mean, I walked to the theater blasting “Light Years” through my headphones to get myself pumped up. And then, as soon I saw her, she was gone, and my heart drooped. Enjoying the film probably helped my recovery but there’s something to be said for her not tagging along and potentially turning into, say, Lucky Larry. That would have been grotesque. Instead, we could revel in her instantaneous ice princess gone through the door and wonder, “Who was she? Where did she come from?” And imagine a prequel spin-off series, Real Housewives of San Francisco, starring Susan Riddick.

San Andreas

When the first earthquake of the so-called swarm triggering “San Andreas” hits, Ray (Dwayne Johnson), a helicopter rescue pilot, swoops into crumbling downtown L.A. to save his about-to-be ex-wife Emma (Carla Gugino). The sequence, paced and crafted by director Brad Peyton with a welcome professionalism, epitomizes the entire film. You’re not thrilled so much as satisfyingly entertained. And rather than your senses being numbed by a pummeling of special effects, you smile at the fun-filled ridiculousness of the tension escalating in expert increments. Even more, though, than the delightful derring-do, the sequence is notable for whom else is around – namely, no one.

Like any summer blockbuster worth its elephantine budget, “San Andreas” takes a catastrophic event and ups the catastrophe to “11”. It’s not enough to just have an earthquake; no, the whole damn San Andreas fault has to go off, and so it does. “It’s not a question of if,” says Lawerence (Paul Giamatti) a CalTech professor whose earthquake prediction models predicting the unthinkable have come true. “It’s a question of when.” And when is, like, five minutes after the movie starts. The earth vibrates, and then vibrates again, buildings crumble, bridges topple, and a tsunami threatens San Francisco, which is where Ray and Emma’s daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario), is stranded with her potential stepfather (Ioan Gruffurd, like a cardboard cutout of evil). So, Ray and Emma make haste by helicopter, plane, boat and gas-guzzling SUV to both reconcile their union and rescue Blake and the new friends, British brothers Ben (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) and Ollie (Art Parkinson), she’s obligatorily made.

Though the scale of destruction is expansive, the film’s focus remains deliberately intimate, as if the only world the film builds is the one concerning Ray and his family. The series of warnings issued by Lawrence might as well be just for them. In another film this brush off of innumerable extras, real and computerized, affected by the incessant tragedies might elicit legitimate accusations of empty morals, but in one proudly wearing implausibility as a badge of honor, it hardly matters. San Andreas subscribes whole-heartedly to the Roger Ebert Law of the Summer Movie stipulating that on a warm summer night a movie's dumbness correlates directly to its enjoyment level. And by maintaining such hyper-specific focus, the film remains refreshingly light on its feet, moving briskly, all action-adventure ascent, which makes it feel fun rather than another CGI slog.

No one seems to be having more fun than Giamatti. He transforms Giving Exposition into an art form. He stammers and stumbles, not from confusion but from awe-inspired disbelief. Watching him trace the outline of what’s about to happen on a map, talking out loud to himself as he does it, is comical and comically riveting. Any time we don’t know what’s going on the film cuts to Giamatti and he tells us. Maybe what he’s telling us is bogus to deGrasse Tyson and his legion of nit-pickers but Giamatti makes every word true. “God be with you,” Giamatti says and you can practically see him post-cut pumping his fist and hollering “Nailed it!!!”

“San Andreas’s” bread isn’t buttered, however, on seismology specifics but on the bulging biceps of Dwayne Johnson. The establishing sequence in which he saves a teenage girl from certain cliffside doom introduces us to him with a shot in which he turns to a reporter in the back of his chopper, grinning as the sunshine appealingly glints off his “Top Gun” sunglasses. It’s the grin of a movie star who knows he’s got top billing. Johnson never really comes across vulnerable, not even in reciting monologues about his other daughter who drowned in a rafting accident whom he couldn’t save. It's like even he knows she was pulled under not by his failings but by narrative undertow to provide him some motivation.

No, Ray is at his best simply facing each new obstacle with taciturn cheer. It’s the sort of film that works precisely because it’s unsurprising. It’s The Rock solving action movie equations. If you can't land, you parachute. If you can't drive a car through, you steer a boat around. Each problem solved is the delightful reward. He's a professor, really, as much as an EMT, one with a doctorate in Renny Harlin, and all of California is his blackboard. Granted, it might be nice to see Emma pitch in with a bit more now and then. At the end she gets to ram a motor boat through glass, which is nice, and her kiss-off line to her not-gonna-be-my-husband is hella good, but more often than not she’s a sidekick rather than a co-conspirator. Still, as a couple Johnson and Gugino, who un-par for the Hollywood course are the same age (43), completely convince. She’s not built like him – who is? – but Gugino has an inherent tough streak that matches up.

Daddario matches up to Johnson too, if not in build or complexion in spirit and attitude. You can see where her character’s morphed into her father’s daughter, and, more often than not, she’s carrying these two brothers who seem to be waiting for Fawlty Towers to collapse in her wake. And that’s what ultimately marks “San Andreas” not even so much as a husband & wife reconciling in the midst of tragedy as a paternal love story. Blake might just grow up to star in a sequel where she has to save her own kids from a tropical cyclone.

5 Theories for Kylie Minogue's Final Line of San Andreas Dialogue

And so the release date of “San Andreas” draws nearer. We here at Cinema Romantico are over-the-moon anticipatory for Brad Peyton’s CGI spectacle of the earthquake to end the Earthquake. Not because of the movie itself, mind you. Ha! That’s kooky talk! No, we are excited to finally find out just who in the hell our beloved Kylie Minogue will be playing. We know she’s playing someone named “Susan Riddick” and that Ioan Gruffudd is playing someone named “Daniel Riddick” because IMDB tells us so, but beyond that……nothing. We have scoured the Internet, believe us, for traces of Susan Riddick’s character DNA and come up empty. And yet, in the wake of the obligatorily glitzy film premiere, one clue trickled in from the Twitters in the form of a Tweet from New Idea Magazine's Associate Editor, Matthew Denby.

Matthew Denby @MrMattDenby · May 25

. @kylieminogue's final line of dialogue in #SanAndreas is the title of one of her songs.

A ha! Well now we're onto something!

5 Theories for Kylie Minogue's Final Line of San Andreas Dialogue

Better the Devil You Know. Susan Riddick, famed seismologist, gives the keynote address at a conference regarding the potential of “an Earthquake Storm.” “This,” she explains, “is a cataclysmic series of earthquakes spread out over many years. Yet our recent models show an increasing likelihood that this storm could, in fact, catastrophically take place over a period of several weeks rather than years, a scientific anomaly not unlike the one featured in Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow.” Less than 24 hours later, the storm is unleashed. A colleague looks at Susan Riddick in their chic laboratory and remarks, ominously, “It's happening just like you said it would.” Susan Riddick shrugs: “Better the Devil You Know.” The floor collapses and they plummet to their ultimate demise.

Never Too Late. As if trucked in from a bad Hallmark movie, Susan Riddick is a married mother of three who, lately, has been devoting far too much to getting ahead on the corporate ladder, working late and on weekends, forgetting her daughter's recital and her son's track meet. When her husband speaks, her mind drifts to the quarterly financials. Her life, you might say, is in need of a shake-up. She gets it. On the way to her other son's soccer game where she's supposed to have the halftime treats she has forgotten the last 22 soccer games in a row, the great quake hits. Fatally wounded, she still somehow straggles though a decimated city and to the soccer field where she hands out treats to injured kids and parents. “You remembered,” her other son says. “It's never too late,” she says with her final breath.

Go Hard or Go Home. Susan Riddick, three time 24 Hours of Le Mans champion, is in San Francisco for a road race and in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge with her manager when the quake strikes. As the Golden Gate is torn free from the Marin Headlands, thereby leaving nowhere to flee, Susan Riddick guns the engine anyway. Her manager, panicked, screams “There's no way you can make that jump!” to which Susan Riddick replies, grinning, “Go Hard or Go Home.” They don't make it.

Your Disco Needs You. Susan & Daniel Riddick are a faded Disco Power Couple. And with disco having faded from popular consciousness, their marriage has crashed on the rocks along with their love of Donna Summer (their mentor). But, as “San Andreas” opens, they have a chance run-in with nu-disco mogul Hans-Peter Lindstrøm (as himself). Susan feels herself being swayed to the good side of the force. Daniel, not so much. Yet in a moving sequence, as she takes to the dance floor and becomes lost in the rhythm, feeling space, she pleads for Daniel to join her. He resists. “Don't you see?!” she cries. “Your disco needs you!” Alas, the quake strikes, the dance floor collapses and Susan falls into the void. Daniel, after mourning, realizes his disco does need him and teams up with Lindstrøm for an epic album made in Susan's honor. His song bearing her name opens the Earthquake Benefit of 2015. The film bombs in America. It does gangbusters in Berlin.

Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi. In the midst of earthquake chaos, Emma (Carla Gugino) looks to Susan Riddick. Emma: “Do you remember why you wanted to do this movie?” Susan Riddick: “Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi.” A CGI steel beam falls on top of Susan Riddick. Emma looks to the sky and screams: “Take me too! TAKE ME TOO!!!!!!!”

FIRST LOOK: Kylie Minogue in San Andreas

Note: this is NOT Kylie Minogue in "San Andreas."

5 Roles Kylie Minogue Could Play In San Andreas

Last week it was announced that Kylie Minogue, baddest of the bad asses, will be in starring in the forthcoming thriller "San Andreas." It stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a firefighter and his obligatory ex-wife (Carla Gugino) traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco in the wake of a no-dobut ginormous earthquake to rescue their daughter. What role Ms. Minogue will play, according to The Hollywood Reporter, "is being kept under wraps." Which is no fun at all. Which is why Cinema Romantico is here to help.

5 Roles Kylie Minogue Could Play In San Andreas

1. She stars as the housewife of a San Jose software magnate who accompanies her husband to L.A. where he has business so she can indulge in a spa weekend. When the earthquake hits, however, her chamomile scrub is interrupted and her husband becomes panicked when all electricity has been brought down. She snaps into action, hitches them a ride with The Rock & Carla, fends for herself, makes a fire, kills a coyote and fixes it for supper, and at film’s end asks her spouse who has spent the whole movie clamoring for a generator to re-charge his iPhone Nome 7.7 for a divorce so she can go on a Californicated walkabout.

2.  She stars as the First Lady of California, sort of The Golden State’s Carla Bruni, serenading foreign dignitaries with a cover of Natalie Merchant’s “San Andreas Fault” (obviously) at a Hollywood Bowl benefit when the quake strikes. The Governor falls into a trench and the Lt. Governor (Jason Sudeikis) proves himself an obligatory bumbling buffoon which causes Kylie to take the state’s reins. In "Volcano" terms, she plays Don Cheadle to The Rock's Tommy Lee Jones and Carla Gugino's Anne Heche.....just with a better hat.

3. En route to San Francisco, The Rock and Carla Gugino stop at a Costco for supplies only to find that upon going through the automatic doors they have entered a last chance saloon cut straight from the turn of the century – the turn of the 20th century, that is. Upon meeting the saloon proprietor (Kylie Minogue), they are made to realize they have time-traveled to 1906, a mere twenty-four hours ahead of The Great Earthquake. If they warn people of that earthquake will they be able to alter the future and stop this earthquake? Or would altering the future lead to consequences so dire they are beyond human comprehension? And will Kylie perform a cabaret number that sounds suspiciously more like 2014 than 1906 in an outfit made to look like a cross between Jeanette McDonald and the Fever2002 Tour?

4. With The Rock and Carla Gugino’s daughter stranded post-quake on the fractured and now in-escapable Golden Gate Bridge, they have no alternative but to turn to – quoting the film’s prospective dialogue exactly – “the best bridge climber in the country.” That’s Taryn Higginbotham (Kylie Minogue), currently sitting in a Marin County jail after her latest attempt to scale the Golden Gate was foiled. The Rock and Carla Gugino bust her out - the villainous Marin County Sheriff ignoring earthquake relief to go after her - as she proceeds to lead them on an epic climb of the Golden Gate.

5. The Rock and Carla Gugino strike out for San Francisco only to find it having devolved into a town of post-quake lawlessness where their daughter has been taken prisoner by the Alcatraz Queen (Katy Perry). Desperate to a stage a rescue attempt, The Rock and Carla Gugino hire the only person crazy enough to ferry them across the bay, a mysterious stranger known simply as The Yachtswoman (Kylie Minogue). Alas, it seems The Yachtswoman and the Alcatraz Queen have unfinished business. Mayhem of a most diva-esque variety ensues. The movie forgets about The Rock and Carla Gugino and their daughter and no one complains. And "objective" critic Nick Prigge is heard to say: "I've seen it twenty-five times in the theater and I'm going again tomorrow."

Reader: "Did this post just jump the shark?"