A massive migraine of mass destruction.

Rating: 3/10 (11 May 2015)

For about a third of this two and a half hour follow-up to "The Day After Tomorrow", the audience must suffer through another soap opera plot, this time even more abrasively presented than its predecessor. It involves a divorced couple (John Cusack and Amanda Peet) trying to get their children to safety with the help of Peet's fiancée (Thomas McCarthy) when underground volcanoes begin to decimate L.A. and the rest of the world. They discover that the powerful leaders and the money men supporters have gotten together to build arks to save themselves from an oncoming flood. OK, fine premise so far, but there is so much silliness in the way that the plot is drawn, and especially with a powerful Russian businessman, his two Pugsly Addams like twin sons, his much younger mistress, and his personal pilot who's obviously having an affair with the mistress.
McCarthy, after only a few flying lessons, is assigned as co-pilot, and already haven flown over Los Angeles where the ground is crumbling beneath them, he must now assist the head Russian pilot in flying this plane that is the size of three Concords. "It's huge!", McCarthy exclaims, to which the Boris Badinoff sounding Russian tycoon simply responds, "It's Russian." If you can get through Woody Harrelson's embarrassing performance as a stoner who first alerts Cusack to the pending doom, then try not rolling your eyes at the sight of Cusack's car barreling down a Santa Monica, California street where the road literally is exploding directly behind them. Then, there's the shots them driving or flying through collapsing highways (Goodbye, 10 freeway!) and various large glass buildings, and while exciting to see, it just gets to be a bit too much. Even more cumbersome is the efforts for everybody to get on the outlandish ark, which on DVD is much easier to tolerate than it was in the movie theater, because there's always the fast-forward button on the remote.
Of course, three years past the paranoia of the real 2012, this has been proved to be a total falsehood, a fright-making exploitation with mostly one dimensional characters and one-note performances that make this a collection of clichés and ultimately, in spite of some riveting moments, a true example of Hollywood bad taste. Danny Glover manages to make his character (President of the United States) totally likable, but Oliver Platt is truly obnoxious as a government hack. Certainly, this was fascinating in its initial big-screen run, but doesn't play well with repeat viewings. Also, after watching L.A. being wiped out by Tornados (through the same director), seeing the Pacific coast go through this again makes me wonder how the director would explain L.A. being re-built within less than a decade so it could only be destroyed again. Ironically, one of my old office buildings in Santa Monica is seen sinking into the Pacific, a big chunk of that coastal city being lifted off its axis and sliding down like the Titanic in the North Atlantic. So even though I may not give the movie "two thumbs up" for quality, I can give it at least one for sheer gaul if not ingenuity.