2012 is so obvious and excessive it's hard to recommend
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Turns out the world will not end with a whimper but with the mother of all bangs, and sooner than you might think: Come December 2012, it's all over. You've got three short years to pack your bags and kiss your ass goodbye.
In case you've missed the promotional crush for the film, 2012 takes its inspiration from the fact that the ancient Mayan calendar comes to a stop on December 21, 2012, which many have interpreted to mean that the Mayans saw that as an "end date" for humanity.
Of course, in the hands of director Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day), you know how it will go down: A bunch of stuff will blow the hell up, and people will be slaughtered by the truckload along the way. Yeah, it's a disaster movie, cut from the broadest of cloth.
2012 is unique in this genre in that there's really no one to fight and no one to rescue us poor saps stuck on earth. The "bad guy" here is the sun, with the absurd premise that its "solar eruptions" are shooting out "neutrinos" that are somehow "mutating" and "microwaving the earth" which is "melting its core." There's nothing to be done about this problem as we soon find out: Our heroes are simply counting down the days until it all goes to hell and, essentially, the crust comes loose and starts flopping around on the earth like a bad hairpiece. See if you can guess when that happens.
But a movie merely about the earth falling apart doesn't work, so Emmerich focuses the tale on one Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a bad writer and divorced dad who's so clueless he'd happily lead his two young kids over a chain-link fence and onto a dry lakebed that is smoking because it's become so hot from all that microwave action. No matter: The feds, led by magnanimous scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), happily lead them back to safety, where a crazed hippie (Woody Harrelson, in a genius bit of casting) clues them in to what's going on: The world's going to end, and the chosen few will be led to safety on some sort of ship, and he has a map to where these ships are.
What follows is a good-old disaster-slash-road movie, as the world starts falling apart and Curtis and Co. find themselves invariably about three inches ahead of certain doom, by foot, by limo, by RV, and by airplane, en route to what might be a safe haven. And what doom it is. Give 2012 credit: When the world ends, it probably won't look nearly as cool as it does in the hands of Emmerich's computers. California liquefies and slides into the sea. Hawaii becomes wholly molten. Mountains explode. Clouds of ash billow like a million atom bombs.
No landmark is spared. The Sistine Chapel crushes throngs of believers. A tsunami-carried aircraft carrier takes out the White House while the President (Danny Glover -- clever!) looks on. No character is spared, either. Don't get too attached to anyone over the age of 15 in this movie. Emmerich's dedication to killing off his top-line cast is impressive, and even a little shocking at times. Parents are duly warned.
Rest assured this is a popcorn movie, and an incredibly stupid one at that. But I'll freely confess that its bombastic effects are more than a little spine-tingling and even goosebump-raising. Emmerich strives for realism (California even has a Governator) as often as possible in order to temper his tendency to fly over the top with his stunts. This actually works, humanizing the movie (a little) and making you wonder a bit whether the movie theater has been retrofitted for earthquakes recently.
Ultimately, though, 2012 is so obvious and excessive it's hard to recommend. Too long by an hour and populated with nothing but stereotypes, we ultimately want the world to come to an end, if only so we can get up and go to the bathroom.
Sorry, kids.
Directed By: Roland Emmerich
Playboy Rating: 3
Starring: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Thomas McCarthy, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Liam James, Morgan Lily, Zlatko Buric
Filmcritic.com
Buy
2012 [DVD] at Amazon
You may also be interested in:
Four Seasons Lodge - review
The House of the Devil - review
Turns out the world will not end with a whimper but with the mother of all bangs, and sooner than you might think: Come December 2012, it's all over. You've got three short years to pack your bags and kiss your ass goodbye.
In case you've missed the promotional crush for the film, 2012 takes its inspiration from the fact that the ancient Mayan calendar comes to a stop on December 21, 2012, which many have interpreted to mean that the Mayans saw that as an "end date" for humanity.
Of course, in the hands of director Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day), you know how it will go down: A bunch of stuff will blow the hell up, and people will be slaughtered by the truckload along the way. Yeah, it's a disaster movie, cut from the broadest of cloth.
2012 is unique in this genre in that there's really no one to fight and no one to rescue us poor saps stuck on earth. The "bad guy" here is the sun, with the absurd premise that its "solar eruptions" are shooting out "neutrinos" that are somehow "mutating" and "microwaving the earth" which is "melting its core." There's nothing to be done about this problem as we soon find out: Our heroes are simply counting down the days until it all goes to hell and, essentially, the crust comes loose and starts flopping around on the earth like a bad hairpiece. See if you can guess when that happens.
But a movie merely about the earth falling apart doesn't work, so Emmerich focuses the tale on one Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a bad writer and divorced dad who's so clueless he'd happily lead his two young kids over a chain-link fence and onto a dry lakebed that is smoking because it's become so hot from all that microwave action. No matter: The feds, led by magnanimous scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), happily lead them back to safety, where a crazed hippie (Woody Harrelson, in a genius bit of casting) clues them in to what's going on: The world's going to end, and the chosen few will be led to safety on some sort of ship, and he has a map to where these ships are.
What follows is a good-old disaster-slash-road movie, as the world starts falling apart and Curtis and Co. find themselves invariably about three inches ahead of certain doom, by foot, by limo, by RV, and by airplane, en route to what might be a safe haven. And what doom it is. Give 2012 credit: When the world ends, it probably won't look nearly as cool as it does in the hands of Emmerich's computers. California liquefies and slides into the sea. Hawaii becomes wholly molten. Mountains explode. Clouds of ash billow like a million atom bombs.
No landmark is spared. The Sistine Chapel crushes throngs of believers. A tsunami-carried aircraft carrier takes out the White House while the President (Danny Glover -- clever!) looks on. No character is spared, either. Don't get too attached to anyone over the age of 15 in this movie. Emmerich's dedication to killing off his top-line cast is impressive, and even a little shocking at times. Parents are duly warned.
Rest assured this is a popcorn movie, and an incredibly stupid one at that. But I'll freely confess that its bombastic effects are more than a little spine-tingling and even goosebump-raising. Emmerich strives for realism (California even has a Governator) as often as possible in order to temper his tendency to fly over the top with his stunts. This actually works, humanizing the movie (a little) and making you wonder a bit whether the movie theater has been retrofitted for earthquakes recently.
Ultimately, though, 2012 is so obvious and excessive it's hard to recommend. Too long by an hour and populated with nothing but stereotypes, we ultimately want the world to come to an end, if only so we can get up and go to the bathroom.
Sorry, kids.
Directed By: Roland Emmerich
Playboy Rating: 3
Starring: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Thomas McCarthy, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Liam James, Morgan Lily, Zlatko Buric
Filmcritic.com
Buy
2012 [DVD] at Amazon
You may also be interested in:
Four Seasons Lodge - review
The House of the Devil - review
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