You aren't important enough to survive the apocalypse.

Rating: 2/10 (16 November 2009)

Seriously, why does Emmerich even bother casting actors? Just show stuff blowing up. That's all he cares about. Watching this is like seeing any number of faceless human traits and personalities in human skin. There's not a shred of acting going on here, because everyone has a one-line definition of who their character is and what he does. John Cusack? Writer and terrible dad. Woody Harrelson? Crazy government conspiracy cook. Danny Glover? Selfless president. Chiwetel Ejiofor? Intelligent scientist with all the answers. Roland, next time, just blow stuff up. Save the money you'd be paying actors and just blow more stuff up.
The effects were all that you would even care to look at here. There was nothing redeeming about this utter pile. The action is so over-the-top and excessive that you can't even tell what's going on half the time. That, and how many times do we have to see the SAME ACTION SEQUENCE? How many times did a plane fall off a crumbling runway in this movie? How many times did John Cusack (aka the world's BEST FRIGGIN' DRIVER EVER) jump over cracks or fireballs or chasms in his vehicle? Seriously, John Cusack is not Superman. Although he can apparently outrun the pyroclastic flow of a FRIGGIN' SUPERVOLCANO. I'm not kidding. Roland Emmerich just took science and not only wiped his rear end with it, he dropped a deuce on its chest and hit it repeatedly in the face with a shovel.
But the most ridiculous part of this movie is the film's "theme" and how it plays out. Cusack's character is a writer who wrote this book about how human beings need to be selfless and think of others and save each other. Actually a really decent theme, right? Especially with the whole world-is-ending thing.
Well now let's apply that theme to the movie at large. It's like 2010 and the government figures out that the world is SCREWED, so they get together with the rest of the world's governments and they get their stuff together and they're gonna save humanity. They are coming up with a plan, damn it, and screw you 2012 apocalypse, MANKIND WILL LIVE ON. Hmmmmm... that's pretty sweet actually. Can't complain about that at all. Mankind will be saved. ASSUMING THAT THEY HAVE A BILLION DOLLARS! That's right. Mankind has to be selfless and love one another, ASSUMING YOU'RE OF GREAT IMPORTANCE TO HUMANITY or that you HAVE A BILLION DOLLARS *PER SEAT* to buy a ticket on an ark. If you're just Joe-nobody or Jane-nobody, you can basically go get screwed, because the government has no interest in saving you because you're worthless.
But they'll at least tell us that doom is impending, right? They'll let us know. I mean they gotta, THE WORLD IS ACTUALLY GOING TO END AND MOST OF HUMANITY WILL DIE. Either that or they'll completely ignore telling us and say nothing for years, and only finally tell us after the Yellowstone SUPERVOLCANO erupts and we're all screwed anyway. I dunno, I just like to think that if the world was going to end, they'd kinda let us simple folk know. In the movie they even said that they "didn't want to cause anarchy." WHO CARES?! The WORLD IS GOING TO END. WHO CARES if there's anarchy? You already don't care enough to let us know that we're gonna die, or to include us in your grand "save humanity" plan because we're not important enough to you - so who gives a crap if we tear the world apart before mother nature rips the entire Earth a new one? I'll tell you who - really rich and important people, THAT'S WHO! Numerous people are murdered simply because they dare to try to tell people that the Earth is going to flush them down the planetary toilet, and that the world's governments knew AND lied about it, and have a big "save humanity" plan that they casually forgot to mention to most of the 6 billion of us living on the planet.
I'd like to think that if the world's governments got together in 2010 and said, hey, in 2012, the world is really gonna die, we've got proof, but we've got a plan to build ships and save humanity. We'll need a lot of resources to complete this, do you care? I think a tax hike to pay for a few dozen or so of these big arks to save mankind is a pretty decent reason to take some of my hard-earned money. Granted, they would have to let it be known that not *EVERYONE* could be saved, but hell, at least take the children? Let a new generation have a chance at survival? Nope. Apparently the only way they could afford to pay for the arks is to have really rich people do it, so that really rich people were the only ones who would get saved. I'm sorry, WHAT? It's great to know that honestly, in Emmerich's world, Paris Hilton could be saved from utter destruction of humanity while so many people with at least some kind of intelligence will be left to die in an unholy torrent of hell and fire and DEATH. To top it off, the movie has the arrogance to play its theme at the end when they try to leave a bunch of these way-more-important-than-you people behind, and we get a big impassioned speech about how we have to be selfless and help our fellow man. You know, like the 5 or 6 billion of us you just let die because you were too busy being elitist pricks to tell us the world was going to end or to ask us if we wanted to pitch in some cash to build some live-saving arks.
Avoid, avoid, AVOID this movie unless you want to be insulted and told that you'll never be as good or important as the rich and powerful elite.