Check it out, just don't take it too seriously.

Rating: 6/10 (17 November 2009)

Going in expecting the worst (I'm talking Transformers 2 bad), I came out pleasantly surprised and satisfied.
However, there are more than a handful of critical issues with the film. The biggest and most prominent one that continued to strike my nerves was the comic relief. In a film depicting the end of the world where millions upon millions of people are dying comic relief and any sort of humour at all is BEYOND unnecessary. It just doesn't work.Period. It seriously hurts the film and without it, I would have awarded the film with at least another star Also the dialogue and most of the characters are corny and poorly written.This is somewhat expected from a disaster flick. However, it gets really distracting and for such a grand scale disaster film, some more time should have been put into fixing this problem to enforce the credibility and believability of the whole film.
The visual effects in the film are easily the strongest point but we all knew that anyways. the scenes of disaster are beautifully crafted and look wonderful on the big screen: this is definitely a must see in the theatre. There is enough destruction to keep the film interesting and it is properly spread out throughout the 2 and a half hour runtime. SO surprisingly, the film kept me entertained for the entire length and I never once thought, "When is it over?" The story is much stronger than i would have expected and does a decent enough job at setting up the disasters and stitching them together well enough. It is in no way excellent but it gets the job done.
The film plays out like a corny 70's B-disaster-movie when it was advertised as a dramatic, ground-breakingly real and chilling depiction of the end of mankind. The later is what it should have been. However beyond all of it's flaws the spectacular visual effects and solid enough storyline are enough to merit a recommendation.
Check it out, just don't take it too seriously.