Good theatrical poster; movie a bit better than The Day After Tomorrow

Rating: 5/10 (9 December 2009)

I will start with the obviously good things; '2012''s theatrical poster is awesome. '2012' seems somewhat better than Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow; like that one, it amply oozes with ideological rubbish. Universal Soldier remains the best flick this director made.
Other than that, the effects are less than what was, I believe, expected. Not very impressive, I assert; not very impressive, at least for a disaster movies buff like me. I mean:--that budget? ...--and those effects??! The cast is notably mediocre, notable chiefly for its bare mediocrity (except, maybe, for that Thandie Newton). Otherwise, they got George Segal, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson for one reason or another. The script is sub-ordinary slapdash, the lines are execrably bad. There are the mandatory _clichés:--the dysfunctional family, the kid with a medical condition (Morgan Lily, we are told, pisses in bed); an additional one:--the greedy surgeon. A fat European, Zlatko Burić, does a moderately colorful villain.
Yet I liked one scene--the one when John Cusack rescues his family from the crumbling house.
The notions of tectonics used for this movie are very approximative. The breaking should be preceded by the shaking; it shakes before it breaks. The earth should not break like a pancake.