So Dumb It's Not Really Any Fun

Rating: 2/10 (13 April 2010)

I made the mistake of watching "2012" and "Battlefield Earth" in the same weekend. I think I can still feel my brain cells dying.
I can enjoy a big, dumb movie as much as the next guy, and anyone going into "2012" thinking it's NOT going to be a big dumb movie deserves what he gets, but come ON. Did it have to be THIS dumb?
John Cusack looks bored and embarrassed to be headlining this special effects extravaganza about the end of the world. He plays an obscure writer who leads his family to safety as the Earth's crust becomes separated from its core and starts to slip around like a loose sock. As far as I can tell, this means that the South Pole ends up where Milwaukee, Wisconsin used to be, but somehow whole mountain ranges, cities (what's left of them after mega-quakes tear them apart) and the people still living are able to just ride around the world's axis like they're on a big merry-go-round.
The first action sequence is so preposterous that it leaves the film nowhere to go. Cusack, driving the best-made limo of all time, out runs a fault that is tearing Los Angeles away from the continental United States, even at one point (I'm not making this up) driving it through a building as it's collapsing(!) to end up safely on the other side. Why is it that if I tried this I'd pop a tire within two minutes? This scene, and many more like it, are played for yucks, which doesn't help. The special effects are surprisingly bad for such a high-profile movie. But the worst thing about "2012" is how tired it feels. Roland Emmerich is now stealing from himself, taking stray parts of his other movies and patching them together in the hopes that they'll again strike gold.
The cast also includes Amanda Peet, who tries valiantly to give an actual performance, and at the other end of the spectrum, Woody Harrelson, who the Motion Picture Academy should sue for defamation. Being nominated for an Oscar in the same year that you give a performance like the one he gives here pretty much discounts 80 odd years of Academy history.
Grade: D