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If you judge a film based on how well it delivers what an audience should expect of it, I find it hard to believe that 2012 could possibly disappoint (other than possibly ruining dinner plans with its extreme length). This is the culmination of Roland Emmerich's career, an everything-AND-the-kitchen-sink film that never hides its intention to be nothing more than a ridiculous, over-the-top, jaw-dropping rollercoaster of an experience. Is it good? It depends on what you mean by “good.” Was The Poseidon Adventure good? The Towering Inferno? 2012 is a movie that the great disaster movie filmmaker Irwin Allen would have adored every single frame of. Sure, Emmerich still can't handle the emotional material, the film drags, and he can't stick the landing of this oversized plane, but there's enough gleeful lunacy on display in 2012 that I can't imagine audiences will care too much about the film's lack of traditional elements like, oh, storytelling or acting. But what elevates 2012 is that those elements, like in films of Allen's day, aren't essential to the experience. You don't get off a rollercoaster and complain about the lack of storytelling.
If disaster movies have taught us anything, it's that nothing brings a fractured family together like the end of the world. The clan in 2012 is the Curtis family, led by writer Jackson (John Cusack), who is estranged from the mother of his two children Kate (Amanda Peet). Jackson happens to be taking his two kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily) on a camping trip in Yellowstone when he discovers, through the help of presumed-crazy DJ Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson) that the park has become a barometer for the end of the world. It turns out that the sun has been shooting off neutrinos that have turned the Earth's core into something of a stew and melted the foundation that holds the crust together. Consequently, as the Mayans predicted, the ground on which we stand is about to get a little unstable.
One of the first men to realize what's going to go down during the holiday shopping season of 2012 is government scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor). He alerts noble President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover), his slimy chief-of-staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), and even the lovely first daughter (Thandie Newton). It's not long before Anheuser and his team are devising an elaborate escape plan, one that the Jacksons hope to run hard and fast enough to catch up with.
At its best, 2012 is basically a massive chase film with the Jacksons being the prey and Mother Nature being the predator. Emmerich starts by sending Los Angeles into the ocean and moves on to a cavalcade of landmarks. Yellowstone becomes a seething volcano, Las Vegas falls into the Earth's core, DC gets hit by a tsunami, the Vatican tumbles through Italy, and so on and so on. It's the Emmerich of film's past turned up way past eleven. The Jacksons (and Kate's new man played by Thomas McCarthy and, for most of the film, a Russian billionaire, his girlfriend, and twin children) stay one propeller turn away from fiery death at the end of pretty much every set-piece. And it's those ludicrously conceived set-pieces that allow critical thought to dissipate under a tidal wave of CGI. The fact is that if you're going to depict the end of the frickin' world, it should be an over-the-top, ludicrous, insane experience like most of the action in 2012. You're not supposed to take the record-breaking movie death toll seriously. That wouldn't work. And when Emmerich and his crew recognize that and deliver the spectacle instead of the substance, 2012 clicks.
Now, they don't always do that. The film runs a bloated 158 minutes and Emmerich can't quite stick the landing. When the emotional speeches about the cost of humanity start to kick in, you'll start looking for the exits. And it's hard for a film that features such a jaw-dropping set-piece as the destruction of California to top itself over the next two hours. Don't go to 2012 looking for build. Like a rollercoaster, it's more of a series of hills than anything approaching believable rising action.
Sure, 2012 could have had tighter scripting, smarter dialogue, and a few more interesting characters, but I would argue that it couldn't have been more of a spectacle. Those ridiculous previews have had audiences laughing at the lunacy of a film about the end of the world; anticipating every disaster movie ever made rolled into one. Take that tongue-in-cheek reaction to the film itself and you may be pleasantly surprised at the most "summer movie" experience of the fall.
Rating: TWO AND A HALF BONES
Release Date: November 13th, 2009
Rating: PG-13
Starring: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson, Oliver Platt, and Danny Glover
Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Harold Klosser and Roland Emmerich
If disaster movies have taught us anything, it's that nothing brings a fractured family together like the end of the world. The clan in 2012 is the Curtis family, led by writer Jackson (John Cusack), who is estranged from the mother of his two children Kate (Amanda Peet). Jackson happens to be taking his two kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily) on a camping trip in Yellowstone when he discovers, through the help of presumed-crazy DJ Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson) that the park has become a barometer for the end of the world. It turns out that the sun has been shooting off neutrinos that have turned the Earth's core into something of a stew and melted the foundation that holds the crust together. Consequently, as the Mayans predicted, the ground on which we stand is about to get a little unstable.
One of the first men to realize what's going to go down during the holiday shopping season of 2012 is government scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor). He alerts noble President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover), his slimy chief-of-staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), and even the lovely first daughter (Thandie Newton). It's not long before Anheuser and his team are devising an elaborate escape plan, one that the Jacksons hope to run hard and fast enough to catch up with.
At its best, 2012 is basically a massive chase film with the Jacksons being the prey and Mother Nature being the predator. Emmerich starts by sending Los Angeles into the ocean and moves on to a cavalcade of landmarks. Yellowstone becomes a seething volcano, Las Vegas falls into the Earth's core, DC gets hit by a tsunami, the Vatican tumbles through Italy, and so on and so on. It's the Emmerich of film's past turned up way past eleven. The Jacksons (and Kate's new man played by Thomas McCarthy and, for most of the film, a Russian billionaire, his girlfriend, and twin children) stay one propeller turn away from fiery death at the end of pretty much every set-piece. And it's those ludicrously conceived set-pieces that allow critical thought to dissipate under a tidal wave of CGI. The fact is that if you're going to depict the end of the frickin' world, it should be an over-the-top, ludicrous, insane experience like most of the action in 2012. You're not supposed to take the record-breaking movie death toll seriously. That wouldn't work. And when Emmerich and his crew recognize that and deliver the spectacle instead of the substance, 2012 clicks.
Now, they don't always do that. The film runs a bloated 158 minutes and Emmerich can't quite stick the landing. When the emotional speeches about the cost of humanity start to kick in, you'll start looking for the exits. And it's hard for a film that features such a jaw-dropping set-piece as the destruction of California to top itself over the next two hours. Don't go to 2012 looking for build. Like a rollercoaster, it's more of a series of hills than anything approaching believable rising action.
Sure, 2012 could have had tighter scripting, smarter dialogue, and a few more interesting characters, but I would argue that it couldn't have been more of a spectacle. Those ridiculous previews have had audiences laughing at the lunacy of a film about the end of the world; anticipating every disaster movie ever made rolled into one. Take that tongue-in-cheek reaction to the film itself and you may be pleasantly surprised at the most "summer movie" experience of the fall.
Rating: TWO AND A HALF BONES
Reviewed by Brian Tallerico (MovieRetriever.com Film Critic)
Release Date: November 13th, 2009
Rating: PG-13
Starring: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson, Oliver Platt, and Danny Glover
Director: Roland Emmerich
Writers: Harold Klosser and Roland Emmerich
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