Family, family, family... isn't it what Hollywood is all about...?

Rating: 6/10 (27 January 2012)

To review a film like 2012 is like critiquing the rinse cycle of your latest wash. It happened and the product came out exactly as its makers intended it. The only comment I would like to make, though, is how obvious and how telling some of Hollywood's strategies are being displayed here. Since storytelling has been invented by a couple of apes coming out of the Cro-Magnon era, the main, almost the only common factor in all narratives is Family. What is Cinderella but the story of families protecting and promoting their DNA? What is the Iliad and the Odyssey but competing families struggling to get their genes to procreate? What is the Sopranos... You get the point. 2012 is the history of a failed family (a divorce) getting back together after the new husband has been properly dispatched in a submarine turbine. The End. Subplot elements include a Russian tycoon and his spoiled brats accompanied by an unfaithful mistress (also dispatched) and her pilot lover (ditto). The brats survive. Urgent need of an academic journal devoted exclusively to Narrative and Family.