2012: -- Review

Rating: 7/10 (16 November 2009)

Rolland Emmerich's 2012 is not a perfect film. The uplifting music inserted at the end is stupid. Moreover, you won't find any sympathetic characters, except perhaps the chicken whose head pokes up when she realizes that she might escape beheading. But you know what? 2012 is a lot of fun to watch.
Here's why. First, the special effects which cost $250 million are great. Everything is destroyed, including Michaelangelo's ceiling at the Sistine Chapel. Second, the premise works because of course we want to know if Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) and his family are going to survive the end of the world. But that's not the only reason why I like 2012. Unlike most disaster films, the director, the producers and the writers did something clever: they did not rely on special effects alone. They recruited good actors and gave them fun characters to play. Take Woody Harrelson's cameo as the conspiracy nut who (as it turns out) was absolutely right about almost everything from the suspicious deaths to the date when the world ends. Oliver Platt is also wonderful as the amoral Carl Arnheuser. When deciding who to save from the apocalypse, Carl reflects that his wife never wanted to see him again. Well it does not take a genius to figure out what happened to her. And I can keep going on.
Finally, even the scenes that don't work are funny. For instance, Jackson Curtis is introduced to us a loser who does not hesitate to take his children to the now dangerous Yellowstone Park, even though he is warned against this by a newly erected gate and a restricted sign. "Don't you read the signs," his son says. And yet, Jackson is apparently a brilliant driver. How else can you explain how he is able to navigate through falling buildings, a collapsing freeway and god knows what else without crashing the car once? This guy can give James Bond pointers. And what about Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) who, in spite of having only two days flying experience, can navigate a plane -- which has Jackson Curtis and his family -- through skycrapers falling at both ends and a whole host of other catastrophes, again without a single scratch. Either this guy had a great flying instructor or he possessed a natural gift for flying ever since he was a fetus in his mother's womb. Lastly, I could not help overlook the fact that President Thomas Wilson (which was obviously modelled on Obama) was surprisingly old. Maybe, the economic crisis, the heathcare debate, the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, Gitmo, pirates and now the end of the world placed such a strain on this guy that he ended up aging prematurely in a big way. Even his daughter was not immune because in three years she went from being 10 to 25.
Now I don't want to spoil the rest. Suffice to say, if you want a fun night out with your friends after drinking a few beers, go see "2012." You won't be disappointed.