One of the best worst movies I've ever seen

Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2009)

I hate to love it, and I love to hate it! 2012 is AWESOME in all respects. Awesome special effects and awesome disregard for science, script, originality and simple common sense.
My boyfriend and I must have looked like Al Jolson as we sat simultaneously open mouthed and rolling our eyes at the astonishing CGI and the laughable cod-science on offer, including mutating neutrinos, underfloor microwave heating (but no apparent increase in the air temperature!), dodgy political shorthand and grand larceny from every disaster movie from The Towering Inferno onwards.
The effects are preposterously over the top and fantastic, with no road left uncracked, no plane able to fly higher than danger, no city too big to upend and slip into the sea like a punctured lilo. The destruction of LA is wanton and wonderful, with palm trees and piers disappearing before your very eyes, and the downtown area immeasurably improved by falling into a large hole.
Then it's on to Vegas, and one can't help thinking there's something of the Sodom and Gomorrah in the glee of both cities' total annihilation.
Similarly, the only moral of the story - if one can be found under the rubble - seems to be 'Plastic Surgery is Bad', as everyone involved in a particular boob job comes to an unpleasant end.
John Cusack is a great actor and without his inclusion this movie would have been even more stupid, but he always manages to inject a bit of intelligence and humour, even into the Apocalypse. Good on yer John! There's an extraordinarily hackneyed 'plot' about a hopeless dad reconnecting with his kids during a disaster - a role already played once to good effect by Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds. Sadly it seems that nowadays - according to Hollywood - it takes Armageddon to make men grow up and take a bit of responsibility. The moral maze created in this particular instance (where the caring, loving, hardworking stepfather meets an unexpectedly unjust death merely to facilitate rekindled romance for Our Hero) is too tangled to be tackled in a mere review. Along with the patchwork science, it really needs a thesis to do it justice. Suffice to say, you've seen it all before, just not as big or as loud or as clichéd.
The script has a few funny lines (mostly from Cusack) but they are overwhelmed by many hundreds more which were predictable, familiar, and downright dumb.
The unintentionally hilarious moments include someone yelling about a job being 'a SUICIDE mission' - right before a ten year old boy manages to pull it off with a torch and a deep breath - and the brilliant geologist volunteering to fix a stuck gate on a trillion-dollar ship because, of course, scientific and mechanical knowledge is 100% interchangeable.
Anyway, you get the picture. Take a friend you can laugh about it with afterwards, but I guarantee that during the show your eyes will be popping!