Not as bad as I thought it was going to be

Rating: 7/10 (8 March 2010)

I had heard some pretty bad things about this movie. I was prepared for the worst. Yes, the dialogue is hokey. Yes, the plot is implausible (as far as we know). Yes, there are some AMAZING coincidences that take place. Yes, everyone on the planet (except the makers of this movie) knows that jet airplanes can't fly through volcanic ash -- yet they do anyway, several times. Yes, it is a bit preachy all the way through the movie. Yes, according to this movie, white people are pretty bad and black people and people of color are mostly good. Yes, it's a convenient, symbolic, cheesy, bordering-on-racist ending ("The whole African continent has risen several thousand feet and most likely, never even flooded!"). The rest of the world was flooded. For those of you who haven't read The Bible, God flooded the Earth because it was filled with evil (this movie seems to forget that He promised he would never do it again). Yes, it's two-and-a-half hours long, when it really didn't have to be (as usual with 2.5 hour long movies).
Having said all of that, all-in-all, it was a fairly entertaining movie. The special effects were pretty damn good. The story is fairly compelling. The acting is marginal, but the actors didn't have much quality dialogue to deal with. The direction was a little sketchy too, but with a guilty "pleasure" like this movie, you can even excuse that. I know it sounds like I'm talking you out of the movie, but I'm actually trying to talk you into it. It's worth seeing.