Oh, Emmerich what were you thinking?

Rating: 2/10 (17 November 2009)

This is a movie I find it hard to write about because there is just so much to attack - and a complete flame isn't fun to read, so I'll try to be balanced - but I may fail:
Personally I can accept the end of earth premise with only a twinge of ire at the unnecessarily improbable reason it happens. That's pretty much all I can accept because the rest is horribly bad. The acting would have been OK if the dialogue had at least been mildly interesting - Woody Harrelson's portrayal being the exception, and at 158 minutes there is way too much of the boring dialogue to be had - they could easily have cut an hour.
The action sequences are completely over the top which is expected in a disaster movie, but here the characters aren't on a cliff's edge the whole time they are for the most part over the edge yet somehow survive.
Adding to the calamity is the fact that the internal logic is deeply flawed. There are systems that we have been told are gone forever that suddenly work just to create another emotional scene - of which there are plenty, but none that works. Cusack's character is hailed as a hero for nearly killing everybody. They try the emotional President speech but Danny Glover doesn't pull it off due to both the writing & acting.
If you still feel like an over the top disaster action film after this outpouring then go rent "the day after tomorrow" by the same director which is a superior film in every way.