The most realistic effects in a disaster movie ever and a strong cast are wasted in an overlong, poorly written and cheesy film.

Rating: 4/10 (14 November 2009)

2012 is the year the Ancient Mayans predicted the world would end. Perhaps they should have scheduled the film for 2012, because the CGI is ready for this story but the director most definitely isn't. Inadvertently hilarious fact number 1: the Mayan theory about the Apocalyps is a tiny footnote in the story. Number 2: The Academy Award for most appropriate tag line of the year goes to...: "We Were Warned". Yes we were.
Some of Roland Emmerich's previous movies were fun but very very guilty pleasures, one I'm still not ashamed of loving the - in my social circles anyway - popcorn classic "Independence Day". Lesser entries in this veteran disaster movie maker's career include "10,000BC" and "Godzilla".
It would've made a great radio contest to give away a meet-and-greet with the cast or something of the like if you could guess the budget of this CGI orgy. The right answer: $260,000,000!!! To get a scale on this, the disaster movie "Knowing" from earlier this year cost $50,000,000. This certainly makes you look at the controversy about the budget of "Titanic" back in 1997 in a different light, the sum of that 7-time Oscar winner: a "measly" 200 million smackers. I don't think the Oscar to budget ration will be quite as high with this disaster of a disaster film.
This was a film of a great many surprises, surprises in every department except where it matters: the plot. Considering the genre, the acting throughout the entire movie was without exceptions great. Should actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Cusack or Oliver Platt receive an Oscar just for keeping a straight face delivering the script's epically cheesy lines? Another bright spot were the effects, the only fleshed out character of the film. The world sort of implodes and it's quite a treat to watch on the big screen. For me the scenes of the plane crash and the burning forest in "Knowing", or the rolling head of the statue of Liberty in "Cloverfield" were far more unsettling than the destruction of the White house by a mammoth of an aircraft carrier.
And the final scenes of "Knowing" were far more emotional than any of the goodbye's in "2012", there's one exception where I almost felt sincerity: the part where Cusack and Co have to land in the Chinese Sea and the kids realize that they're going to die, I have to credit the great acting of Cusack and the decent child actors for that moment. There's one scene that looked incredibly fake to me: the part where Cusack's running to catch the plane after the exploding Yellowstone volcano, you can clearly see he's standing still and just moving his knees up and down. Overall, these remarks are pet-peeves and the effects of this disaster movie are a landmark achievement.
The less pleasant surprise: what a tediously bloated film. 150 minutes! 150 minutes of a story that spans 70 years and takes us all over the world such as "Benjamin Button", that's entertainment! 150 minutes of cheesy dialog and paper cut-out characters is torture. This is not a joke: this was the first film since Savage Grace (well over two years ago) that I would've walked out of if I wasn't with company. How scary are tsunamis still when you've already been overexposed to destruction of whole cities, the Eiffel Tower, the Christo Redentor statue, and Woody Harrelson by way of a giant fireball.
At one time they travel on a plane and talk for about half an hour, a journey that could and should have been cut shorter. When they finally encounter a helicopter that can rescue them, they don't have the right pass and the script takes us on an unnecessary detour for about twenty minutes. That's about an hour right there, begging for the cutting room floor.
This is such a waste of deliciously cheesy potential. This was an attempt at the disaster movie to end all disaster movies, and that's admirable. In other ways it's just a redoing of "The Day After Tomorrow" with better actors and a bigger budget. The last thing I want to do is come across to the reader as elitist and humorless. I have dozens of guilty pleasure action flicks such as Lethal Weapon, The Last Boyscout, Mortal Kombat, Independence Day, Bad Boys, Speed, Wanted, etc.
I'd like to see a 90 minute fan cut of 2012 realized but this theatrical cut is an hour too long and will never find it's way to my screen again.