The (Somewhat) Intentionally Comedic Apocalypse!!!

Rating: 4/10 (25 December 2009)

If you have seen any of Roland Emmerich's previous work, and based on the box office numbers worldwide, you likely have, you know what to expect with a film from him that promises "The End Of The World." That's plenty of visuals that look like places you know getting destroyed by water, fire, lava and/or earth. For that, "2012" earns 3.5 of the 4 stars I gave it.
The rest belongs to the comedy which I think was intentionally sprinkled throughout the script, guaranteed to keep this from ever getting too frightening. The idea here is a roller coaster ride, not a cautionary tale. As we follow the story of Jon Cusack's failed novelist, his ex wife (Amanda Peet) and his family, it's hard to take anything here very seriously, this despite the performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor as the competent and good-hearted lead scientist working to salvage what he can of the planet.
The film first claims a palpable threat: the earth's core is suddenly heating up at a microwave rate and Ejiofor and his tiny group of scientists and some other officials in the money rich countries are fully aware of this. For something that is supposedly so top secret, quite a few people know what's happening, some are apparently killed passing this info around, and a failsafe system to prevent extinction of the most precious objects (like DaVinci's Mona Lisa) and most precious creatures on the planet (like giraffes and multi-billionaires) has been created by some secret coalition of nations.
There has to be a "town crier" and Woody Harrelson does a cute job as some lunatic fringe radio talk host explaining exactly what is about to happen, but nobody believes him because he's simply out of his mind. The rest of the movie is just all of his unlikely predictions coming true.
The film features plenty of sight gags, like the apocalypse chase scene with Cusack and family outracing the world's biggest sinkhole in his limo, and later in a tiny plane. And there are lots of winking references to other disaster films, like "Titanic," when one of the massive "arks" designed to preserve the lives of humans and animals carves a sidelong cut into another one, effectively sinking it, "Jaws," when Cusack says "We're gonna need a bigger plane," and "The Poseidon Adventure," when he has to swim down and dislodge a rope, in a scene reminiscent of Gene Hackman's role in that earlier film among several others of this sort.
Oliver Platt as a sketchy cabinet member mugs his way through this slog, a mix of jovial and menacing, Danny Glover as the President doesn't add much besides a calming break from the barrage of earthquakes and floods, and actresses Thandie Newton as Glover's First Daughter and Peet have practically nothing to do except react to what's happening, when they have any screen time at all. But, for a nice change of pace, we don't see New York City getting destroyed, typically the first choice of every film of this genre.
The movie tries to make some statements about the value of life and family, and the importance of caring about each other, but that gets swept away by a tsunami of silly as we watch all of our man-made and natural creations, and the people we've crossed paths with along the way, getting taken down like so many bowling pins.
Conversely, when you have characters as uninteresting as everybody but Woody's conspiracy theorist, you might start rooting for the disaster to take them all!
Forget EVERYTHING you know about the Mayan calendar and/or anything you know about any of the life sciences, try to focus on the funny and you'll likely get at least some enjoyment out of this cataclysm.