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Visual:		8.0
Audio:		6.0
Acting:		5.0
Writing:		1.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Roland Emmerich
Writer(s):	Harald Kloser & Roland Emmerich
Starring:	Amanda Peet • Chiwetel Ejiofor • Danny Glover • Oliver Platt • Thandie Newton • Woody Harrelson • John Cusack
Genre:	Action • Adventure • Sci-Fi
Release Date:	November 13, 2009
Rated:

When I first learned that 2012 is over 2.5 hours long (158 minutes, to be exact), I was afraid that it would mean the prolongation of the most unbearable parts of disaster movies. Namely the cloying speeches, the heart-tugging goodbyes and the misshapen romance-during-a-catastrophe subplot. You see, gratuitous destruction, halfwit action and continually dumb choices; these things are the side of bad filmmaking easiest to consent to. The other parts? I’ll be the first bastard overboard and I’ll kill you if you try to save me.

Luckily for all of us, while those offensive scenes are definitely present and accounted for, for the most of its unreasonable running time, 2012 is a hedonistic abuse of computer imagery—horny at the sight of crumbling buildings. Some of the images director Roland Emmerich comes up with are the stuff terrorists empty their sacks to.

I love how terrible the film is at foreplay. It just can’t wait to start kicking shit down, so it rushes through the setup. All of this is based on speculative Mayan premonition, yet they get maybe a total of two mentions in the movie. What we follow is a Chief Science Advisor for the White House (an embarrassingly good Chiwetel Ejiofor, injecting a disproportionate amount of believability into his hammy role) who learns in 2009 that the sun is doing something or other. The earth’s core is turning into a microwave, lands shift… Whatever, who cares. Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis three years later. There. Now start the screaming and the train jumping a plane and the California sinking into the sea.

At the center of all of this bedlam is a failed sci-fi writer and family man (John Cusack), whose novel is used by Emmerich (also the co-writer) to justify his previous films. Cusack's novel, Farewell Atlantis, was mauled by critics for being too optimistic about people’s behavior during a crisis. This, of course, is something Emmerich has long struggled with—his uber-cheesy self-serious statement-making bogs down his movies—but it’s a quality Ejiofor’s hunk-geek (coincidentally being one of the few people who’ve read it) greatly admires and applies later to become the moral example. That means Emmerich’s characters are inspired by Emmerich characters to act more like Emmerich characters. Whoa.

With 2012, I get the feeling that the director is aware of his own reputation as the Duke of Doomsday and he's screwing with his fans and critics alike at this point. Nothing that strays too far, but just enough to disarm and keep you watching. The President’s last public address, supposed to be the obligatory inspirational speech present in Emmerich's other movies, is suddenly cut short by TV broadcasts going down. On the other hand, even when the whole world is being ripped apart, our heroes are still connected to phone lines and the internet—a reverse of the usual "no signal" cliche.

When a character we think is going to survive is unexpectedly trapped and drowning, she yells up for a savior, and the camera reverses only to reveal that she’s been shouting at a giraffe. Little by little, absurdist humor is creeping into Emmerich’s usually straight-faced peril. The foreshadowing and symbolism in the film are just out of control. It gets to a point where a guy would say, “There’s something pulling us apart” to his gal, seconds before a massive quake splits the ground between them. Indeed.

Traditional values still reign, nonetheless. Cusack’s quest is not just to keep his divorced wife (Amanda Peet) and kids alive, but to steal them back from the new boyfriend (Tom McCarthy). The boyfriend's a nice guy, but he’s breaking up the nuclear family, so he has to go. Because it’s still the kind of movie where every time anything important happens, all the men huddle in action while the women hug the children and leave the decisions to the men. When that’s the role of every woman in this movie, representing a global occurrence? It's amusing how blatant it is.

I also noticed that casting Danny Glover as President is Emmerich’s nod to Obama, whose ingenuity and charisma are straight out of one of his movies; but Glover’s President is bold enough to assume that everyone’s religious by leading a prayer as comfort, whereas Obama's been careful to include “nonbelievers” when he addresses Americans. It’s a small detail, but it’s interesting in the context of an apocalyptic siege. Why is the idea of divine faith so irresistible in this type of scenario? Maybe because it easily provides the consolation that gives the film an air of humanity, without having to really deal with the horror of accepting death.

2012 tries to embrace the camp, but can’t let go of its lofty ambition. What could’ve been a double-barrel of fun is frequently overtaken by a preachy and sentimental defense mechanism. It’s a hilarious movie, no doubt. I had tears rolling down my face the entire time from laughing so hard at its shameless excess. Despite the entertainment value, however, it remains a disastrous and ultimately tiring film that falls in the “I’ll watch anything once” bin. At least there’s nowhere else to go from here, right, Roland?

...Roland?