Great special effects and... thats all

Rating: 2/10 (3 December 2009)

Seeing this movie's trailer, I was eagerly waiting to see it.
I wanted so much to see a catastrophe movie, which is not pathetic, extra-patriotic, with self-sacrificing and heroic people.
But i have learned once more (TOO many times I am afraid), that if the following is true: (a) disaster movie (b) in USA, then the movie MUST be pathetic, with very strongly heroic self-sacrificing, patriot characters.
Of course the good characters prevail, and the bad ones die.
Of course the good character saves all, saves mankind, and anyone will listen to him. He makes virtually all that rulers of the world should do.
So... lets be objective. Special effects and CGI are great. These made me (from the trailer) go to the cinema to see this movie. And I was in no way disappointed by them, on the contrary. I could say that the first 20% of the movie was somehow OK. But... come on people. I am a Sci-Fi fan, I understand that the movie has fantastic premises.... but this must not influence character actions and development. They have to be Realistic. We are not watching cartoons here. So these are a few of the stuff that actually ruined the movie, and made me hate it.
* US president who refuses to save himself, remaining on the collapsing earth, and being killed by the disaster while he was nursing wounded people (ohhhhh my god, its so gross)
* new superman character John Cusack. He can escape from a van which, while he is inside, falls into a lava crevasse.
* bad reach Russian guy dies in the end very stupid, while the good poor guys escape. All of them. Oh, and BTW, Russian guy's children escape also (although they were also reach, but we cant kill kids in a patriotic, altruist movie, can we ?)
* after one hour of flight lessons, a common plastic surgeon flies planes much better than Schumacher drives formula 1 cars
* an altruist patriotic scientist can convince all state presidents to be good. And to cooperate.
* the dentist (sorry, plastic surgeon) must die, because John Cusack must return to his ex-wife (who in the while was married to the dentist. No, the surgeon. Silicon surgeon.). We cant let superman alone, can we ?
* by the way, John Cusack can also repair billion dollar hydraulic mechanisms (below the watter) which were broken very easily (suspect, isn't it ?) and easy to fix (for John Cusack. Superman.)
Well.... these are only a few things that actually killed me while seeing this movie. They literally ruined a film which could have been exceptional otherwise.
I give it 2 of 10 (I was mad writing this article:)).