nice special effects but a terrible story

Rating: 2/10 (13 October 2011)

If you are a person who enjoys watching buildings collide and blow up, highways collapse and cars collide and burn, giant tsunami's washing up mountains! and all these crazy stuff, this is the movie you should definitely watch. The special effects are beautiful and nicely made. However, I think the story and the movie overall is a disaster. The topic is a worn-out one: end of the world, and this movie does not add any new bright ideas to the picture. First of all, they mix three different beliefs coming from different religions and present it as an end time scenario. Well, we have the apocalypse as presented by the book of revelation when Christ and his army defeat the anti-Christ in Armageddon. Then, we have Noah's arch which has happened in the past, so it won't have anything to do with 2012. Yet, the scenario presented resembles this story the most. And, lastly there is a Maya prediction of worlds end according to their calendar. All these three stories are mixed in a very shallow and artificial way in order to justify all the special effects.
I do not like John Cusacks play and rule at all. First of all, the only thing that he thinks about is saving his ex-wife and kid while billions of people on earth are dying. My first question is: Is he a hero at all? Secondly, even if he is successful in saving his family, what is it worth? life of these couple of people compared to all those billions lost. Also, I don't like the way they treat queen Elizabeth compared to US president. Well, US president sacrifices his life for his people and refuses to ride the Noah's arch into safety while he knows that most of his country men will be killed. However, we see queen Elizabeth going to the arch with his dogs! which means they worth more then humans for her. Well, I am not sure queen Elizabeth is so mean in reality. Besides, I doubt that Obama would be so noble as to sacrifice his life like that. Anyways, lets not be so fussy over political details.
There are two moments in the movie however that I liked. The first one is when the Russian billioner sacrifices his own life for his daughter. Throughout the movie, you get the feeling he is mostly concerned with his own life and neither his daughters nor his girlfriend are of primary concern to him. He seems to keep them around as sort of company. While he seems to be an antagonist, he willingly sacrifices his life for his daughters near the end which was sort of nice. The second scene that I liked is the Russian billioners girlfriend love towards her dog. She really loves the creature and sacrifices her life for him twice. The second time, she clearly does not survive. While she is not a main character, the affection she shows towards her dog is impressive. The dog does survive thanks to the lady's sacrifice. To sum up, I suggest you avoid this movie and save two hours of your precious time.