Predictable Disaster Movie without Characters to care for!

Rating: 5/10 (3 December 2009)

This is an epic adventure about a natural disaster and the struggle for survival in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, callous politicians and a media interested only in the money shot, personal misery be damned. Sounds like the lot of the all too many flood victims either in New Orleans in 2005 or in Ireland in the last few weeks but it's actually the premise of a new movie, 2012.
Roland Emmerich, its director, has brought us a whole slew of apocalyptic movies in the past, including INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996), which I loved, GODZILLA (1998), which I hated and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004), which didn't make much of an impression one way or the other.
His latest comes to the theatre with an Oscar-calibre cast, including the always watchable Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover and Amanda Peet and the seldom less than wonderful John Cusack. So I was hoping for a film as laugh out loud enjoyable as INDEPENDENCE DAY, a witty, roller coaster thrill of a movie, with all the visceral spills in all the right places. What I got, unfortunately, was closer to THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, a film which, while by no means as dreadful as GODZILLA, never really scales the heights, happy to just float along, a piece of flotsam and jetsam in the ocean of disaster movies, not good enough to break through the clutter but not bad enough to be remembered for being truly brutal.
The basic premise is ridiculous, but that in itself is no bad thing. The Mayan's, apparently, believed the world would end in 2012 and so, as is the way of such films, out comes the dodgy science to explain the apocalypse. The sun's activity is ramping up and a new type of nuclear particle has been formed. The new particles act in a similar manner to microwaves and are heating the earth from within and, as the core heats up, the crust is becoming unstable, leading to a series of earthquakes and tsunamis, which will, eventually, overwhelm the entire planet.
Humans, of course, being clever little buggers, have cottoned on to what's happening. Well, some scientists have and a few eccentrics, like the hilarious Woody Harrelson. The scientists are well on the way to building 'ships' with the capacity to save a tiny fraction of the population, along with a number of important art works and a selection of animals. John Cusack, though a series of coincidences that are so wild as to almost beggar belief, finds out about the 'ships' and sets off to rescue his kiddies and his childhood sweetheart, Amanda Peet.
As the movie progresses it delivers on what was promised in the trailer, but that's about it. All the best bits are in that, and, while it's fun watching well known landmarks disappear in a puff of smoke, the movie doesn't really have enough, either by way of plot, character, set pieces, or truly outstanding special effects to sustain it for its close to two and a half hour running time.
Given the immediacy of global warming and the disastrous floods of recent times, surely a movie like this could have wonderful characters that the audience can empathise with, a horrifying story and amazing special effects? Now wouldn't that be something to see? A movie with characters you genuinely care about while things are falling down and blowing up! Or they could just give the $200 million that this cost to make to the victims of flooding but I suppose that's too unbelievable a story-line for even a movie.