Film Review

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Plot Scientists realise 2012 will see extreme weather effects, seismic activity and continent-sweeping tsunamis — and a secret multi-national project is undertaken to save a select few. Failed science fiction writer Jackson Curtis gets wind of this, and tries to save his family from the cataclysm. Review For decades, Cecil B. DeMille was Hollywood’s go-to megalomaniac when it came to big, simplistic, spectacular devastation, with side-orders of religion and/or patriotism. In the 1970s, Irwin Allen became Master of Disaster, and ships sank, buildings burned, volcanoes blew, cities fell and killer bees swarmed. Now, Roland Emmerich presides over the carnival of destruction, commanding huge budgets, wilfully ignoring scientific advisors to keep the plot boiling (for future reference, sudden continental drift probably will affect your cell-phone reception — but not in this film) and cracking a whip over slave-like hordes of computer-programmers piling up the pixels which render the unbelievable photo-realistic. DeMille’s specialty was historical/religious epic and Allen perfected the ‘disaster movie’, but a necessary escalation means Emmerich has to resort to science fiction to slake audiences’ need for destruction on a supercolossal scale. Godzilla, in which a monster only attacks New York, is one of his smaller films. Having written off the beginnings of human history in 10,000 BC, Emmerich now turns to the immediate and terrifying future and tries to outdo the genocidal upheavals he wrought through alien invasion in Independence Day and global warming in The Day After Tomorrow. The disaster cycle of the ‘70s had to escalate too — after an ocean liner and a skyscraper had been trashed in CinemaScope, the stakes had to be upped to an entire city in Earthquake and a continent or so in Meteor. 2012 has a less easy-to-sell (and, therefore, harder to worry about) concept than earlier moviemageddons — impending doom here isn’t just one big thing, but a matter of solar flares, planetary alignments, earthquakes and big waves, with Biblical overtones of the Flood. What it boils down to is all the disasters from all the other disaster movies happening in one long film. Emmerich tosses off towering infernos by the dozen in single shots, throws Poseidon-like ocean liners (and aircraft carriers) into maelstroms like toys in a bathtub, has entire cities levelled by quakes or swept away by tidal waves (LA, Vegas and DC get it worst, this time), transforms a scenic national park into a volcano, and swamps the Himalayas with a tsunami which makes Peter Weir’s Last Wave seem like a ripple on a duck pond. As expected, the script is a load of old cods, delivered in a hurry by the wildly overqualified likes of John Cusack (everyman Dad), Amanda Peet (underwritten ex-wife), Chiwetel Ejiofor (scientist with integrity), Danny Glover (humane Prez), Thandie Newton (cute First Daughter), Oliver Platt (weasely politico), Woody Harrelson (ranting doomsayer) and George Segal (twinkly old-timer). We get glutinous sentiment, weirdly appropriate low comedy, non-denominational religious mutterings (though the Sistine Chapel cracks and the Vatican collapses) and doses of dignified self-sacrifice, my-kids-must-live heroism and cutthroat politicking from characters competing to secure first-class passage on the Ark. Yes, there’s a cute yapping dog whose survival seems more important than the entire population of India. Many times, cars and planes escape from disasters that seem to chase them off-screen as whole cities fall down or blow up. And the finale brings on an impressive Ark, and plays ridiculous suspense games as the fate of humanity depends on John Cusack holding his breath underwater and ungumming the grinding-works of huge doors.

California is collapsing into the earth; if it isn't massive debts and raging fires, it's subterranean magma flows caused by (and don't quote us on the science behind this, but here goes...) solar flares casting out neutrinos at the Earth, heating its core and causing massive geological disruptions, plate shifts and fault line earthquakes. Of course, the United States eats it first – but there's a secret contingency plan in place to protect the wealthy and privileged as society stands on the threshold of complete annihilation. Naturally, a good-hearted geologist and scientific advisor to the President, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who puts in a good performance under the circumstances), stands up to the corruption and appeals to the President (Danny 'I'm gettin' too old for this s**t' Glover) to make the right decision. Cue the rollicking silliness. You know those scenes that play out in every action movie made since 1980? The ones where the bus jumps the broken bridge? Or a man falls over the edge and everyone thinks he's dead—but it's okay because a single hand suddenly appears, clinging to the cliff? Or how about the plane that's trying to escape from an explosion and gets enveloped in smoke – only to come bursting out with impossible speed? What about the eleventh-hour miscalculation that results in the timer speeding up towards impending disaster? Then there's the grandpa with regrets, the 'ultimate sacrifice' guy, the wormy scientist who makes good, the noble daughter who outlives the father, the divorcee who falls back in love, the evil rich dude, the ethnic stereotype village, the holy man on the mountain, the beauty queen with the handbag dog, the dude with two day's pilot training who must repeatedly fly everyone to safety at street level, through a collapsing city? What about the obligatory heroic kid, or the water escape scene, the tacked-on happy Hollywood ending where it's all sunshine and laughing and nobody really feels too remiss about the death of 5.9 billion people? And that's not even the half of it. Seriously. It goes on and on like this, piling on so much rehash that you will laugh. You can just sit there, switch off and let it wash over you like action-porn. In fact, perhaps that's exactly what 2012 is – the rebirth of action for the sake of action. To describe 2012 as the best 'rollercoasterride-with-a-story-attached' is about as much praise as we can muster for this production. Cusack, who we maintain is charming and a talented fellow when given the right material (think: Grosse Pointe Blank or The Thin Red Line), maintains low gear the whole way through. His strained relationship with his ex-wife (Amanda Peet, looking painfully skinny) gets the same going-over that you've seen countless times. It has all the emotional sincerity of a daytime soap opera, but you won't care – you'll be too busy reeling after watching Chinooks transport elephants and giraffes over mountainous snowfields after gazing in stupefied awe as Cusack and company bail out of the back of a plane inside a Bentley and onto the tundra. A special call out to Woody Harrelson who plays an unhinged conspiracy nut with absolute conviction. Harrelson hams it up so much that he almost points towards 2012 actually being the 'Mars Attacks' comedy that it's desperately trying to avoid. Golden. The real tragedy is this: 2012's production cost an estimated $200-odd million dollars. What's worse, it'll probably make that money back, spawning a hackneyed sequel called 2013. And if there aren't aliens, dinosaurs, transforming robots and Will Smith in there, we'll be bitterly disappointed. So bad that it's good again, 2012 comes from the same school of film failure as Michael Bay's Transformers 2 – only, Roland Emmerich plays far more with sentimentality which softens the blows, whereas Bay just beats you upside the head for two hours until you're spinning and kind of nauseous. Terrible; wonderfully terrible.

We Were Warned. So sayeth the tag line for the latest from Roland Emmerich, master of destruction. And you know what? We were! Back with the first trailer in 2008, it was clear that 2012 was gunning for the title of most-massive-most-deaths-most-destruction-in-a-movie ever: earthquakes, fiery pits, tidal waves that threaten the entire Eastern Seaboard and, generally speaking, the mother lode of apocalypse porn. And? The film so does not disappoint. Even if you take some parts from earlier end-of-days pics like (the awesome) Knowing or Mr. Emmerich’s previous offerings The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, you still won’t be prepared for the sight of California sliding into the Pacific, or a tidal wave—battleships included—washing over the White House. Every single audience member knows what’s coming (and not because of any ancient Mayan prophecy), and so it all becomes a question of the when and the how and the how big can we go.The movie takes it sweet ole time setting up a backstory before the world goes boom. There’s John Cusack, oddly ageless, as a divorced dad who writes not-so-popular books like Farewell, Atlantis (more on this later), and tries to impress his kids, who live with his ex-wife Amanda Peet and her new husband (Tom McCarthy). Then there’s the great Chiwetel Ejiofor (master geologist) and Thandie Newton (presidential daughter and museum expert!); a semi-dastardly Oliver Platt (always so good); and Danny Glover, who plays our president and always seems to be on the verge (either while about to be engulfed by an ash cloud or washed away by a tsunami) of saying “I’m too old for this shit.” Woody Harrelson looks to be having the time of his life playing a crazy (yet oddly accurate) coot who eats pickles, and George Segal is a jazz man on a cruise ship who may or may not connect with his estranged son in Tokyo.And you know what? It doesn’t matter! We all know this movie is just killing time before killing everybody. Luckily, the actors appear to be in on the joke (how else to explain Mr. Ejiofor’s dead-serious delivery about the merits of Farewell, Atlantis, which apparently will become one of the few tomes to make it into a brave new world). There’s a halfhearted attempt to send a message about humanity and always-respect-your-Mayans and etc., but mostly the audience howled with laughter at every solemn exchange. But happily! 2012 is reminiscent of yesteryear ’80s shlock-tastic blockbusters—total popcorn entertainment with ridiculous dialogue and impossible situations and special effects that will boggle the brain for a good two-plus hours. What does it mean that such blissful escapism comes at the hands of the apocalypse? (Can’t pay your rent? It won’t help when the sidewalk ends, pal!) When the credits finally rolled, the crowd sat for a minute dazed. “Holy crap,” the man said behind me. Indeed.

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