Tapered down from a two-part mini-series, director Larry Elikann's disaster movie falls between two stools. The special effects are of a very high order for a TV movie, with production designer Michael Baugh and his team expertly simulating the devastation that could be expected from such a series of seismic shocks. However, the dramatic sequences continue the tradition of immobility, incredulity and inconsequence that has run from Earthquake (1974) through to the recent Dante's Peak and Volcano. Joanna Kerns is painfully earnest as the expert no one listens to, while Richard Masur is hilariously smug as a cynical TV reporter.

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."