If you need explosions and disaster that is downright silly, you get Emmerich, as for story...

Rating: 5/10 (4 April 2010)

2012 is 158 minutes long. This is longer than other movies by Roland Emmerich that include massive destruction and big explosions and people running from that destruction implausibly without getting killed or destroyed or even really hurt that much, like ID4 and Godzilla. He makes movies so preposterously that they either work tremendously (aforementioned) or they don't (10,000 BC). With 2012 he takes the overrated (yes, overrated) myth of the world ending on 12-21-12, the day the Mayan calendar ends, by creating an immense spectacle of the world ending and humanity starting anew with arks. Yeah. That's really how the story boils down to, or how I would like to boil it down to.
There is more story, LOTS more story, so much so that plots go from one to the other, characters are given, um, names and things to say and sometimes do, but by the technique Emmerich sets up we, like the director himself, want to just get to the next big explosion. Especially because about fifteen to twenty minutes of the entire film (primarily in that destruction of California set-piece as the limo goes through the streets and then the plane flies through everything as it's crumbling and tumbling very precisely sideways (no implosions of course)) is actually quite brilliant. This is not being facetious: for at least a small sliver of the runtime, when Emmerich and his crew go for broke, the film is so immensely entertaining precisely because it doesn't give a damn what you think. He'll take down entire blocks, houses, buildings, towers, you name it, he'll kill it and blow it up... just as long as our protogonist and his group make it out all in one piece.
But, again, the runtime is 158 minutes. So a lot of the film is characters, like ones played by really good actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt, standing around arguing the same points over and over again (and, in a pragmatic standpoint, the guy we're supposed to hate, the politician played by Platt, makes more sense usually), and the main family of characters- Cusack, Peet, so on- are so one dimensional as to barely have personalities. Even when the Russian actors are brought on to bring some hammy action there's only so much that can be done with wooden dialog, some of it unintentionally funny if one cares to listen to it fully. And when we're mean to take actions the characters take seriously and deeply, like with Danny Glover's President, it's just even more infuriating. Really, stay with the sinking White House (so to speak)? More like unnecessary drama. Only Woody Harrelson, as a complete whacko conspiracy nut with a radio show and a wish to see Yellowstone erupt as a volcano, lights up the screen to 11 with his energy and bravado.
What we want to see in the case of 2012 isn't some polemic, and certainly not preachiness. At the least Emmerich sidesteps a lot of religious crap and gives us more-so hokey Scientific stuff. Some of the technical jargon, involving super-neutrinos and tectonic plates and the globe shifting around, will be at best silly and at worst insulting to most scientists, but then again why go to 2012 for science anyway? It's all about watching characters we're meant to care about (and if I did, it was only in the most basic turn-off-your-brain way possible, which means not much actually, albeit Cusack is always likable as an actor), going from one big action set piece to another, all leading up to that "ark" made up by the government to ship those people that can get on out of the area before the typhoon hits. A lot of this climax, lasting as long as anything else in the film (which is long), is entertaining, but, again, if you turn off your brain and soak up the consistent, repetitive action scenes (i.e. he'll hold his breath long as he has to... which is a while).
So, go ahead, watch 2012, it's certainly nowhere near the worst blockbuster of 2009 (Emmerich can actually direct big explosion-action-disaster-mayhem-murder sequences in a way that is entertaining in a stupid way, unlike Michael Bay's headache inducing versions). Just don't for a second take it seriously, not even when it puts on airs with its good actors and believable sets.