A Bad, Heartless Film

Rating: 1/10 (19 July 2010)

It's hard to elaborate on the deservedly scathing reviews 2012 has received; it's not only physically implausible, but it indulges in the worst kind of racial stereotyping. And naturally, it's the Americans who run the show and get to survive for the most part. We're meant to identify with a self-centered family group from Southern California that indulges in soap opera dialog with each other even as their friends and neighbors (even eventually their good-guy stepdad) are slaughtered. The only thing that's supposed to matter to them is "family." The African-American President's wife is dead as is the mother of the African-American scientist protagonist. The fact that the middle-aged black women are dead before the movie even starts speaks for itself since there's a lot of discussion about who "deserves" to survive the catastrophe. An elderly Tibetan woman gets to live (even though she doesn't speak English, a major character flaw in a film like this) because she can virtuously save the white protagonists (who probably wouldn't do the same for her if the tables were turned). The CG effects are dramatic, but pointless because they're designed to be sensational and nothing else. There's a protracted water scene (that I fast-forwarded over) at the end of the film that is somehow supposed to do with re-uniting the John Cusack character with his petulant son. The earth has been destroyed, the majority of the world's population has died an agonizing death and we're supposed to care about this? Eventually the (mostly white) survivors set out to repopulate the lone inhabitable continent, Africa. Colonialism begins again. Every single moment of this film is truly and bizarrely bad.