what a waste of resources

Rating: 5/10 (16 November 2009)

This epic movie is Roland Emmerich's baby. This baby could have been as good as Godzilla, Independence day or The Day After Tomorrow. What happens? He screws it up with a lot of emotions, drama and god knows what superhero crap (pardon my language). The trailers had created so much anticipation in the audience but doesn't live up to it at all. OK, yes the CG was good. But you cannot use it as an excuse to cover up the emotional mess that was shown.
The movie starts off with showing the sun emitting some microwaves thats causing the earth's crust to heat up rapidly. This is detected by an Indian in a copper mine where he claims that sometimes the temperature in the mine goes up to 120 deg F. I wonder how the NASA never found out about the heating up of the Earth's Core earlier than the Indian.
The time skips to another place where Mona Lisa is being replaced by a fake to protect it from the destruction that is about to take place. So its apparent here that some super powers know about the 2012 disaster about to take place and we assume that just like Mona Lisa other treasured items are being replaced as well.
Jumping ahead again to 2012 we see a divorced John Cusack who is a limo driver and an author go get his kids in a limo for a camping trip. His ex wife Amanda Peet married to a Plastic Surgeon Thomas McCarthy.
During the camping trip Cusack meets a crazy Woody Harrelson a radio host addressing Mayan predictions and adding to that the almost dried up lake on his camping spot makes Cusack suspicious even though the government scientist Adrian assures him all is fine.
Soon enough the frequency of earth quakes increase and our Cusack puts 2 and 2 together (was he a limo driver or a scientist) and concludes that the Crazy radio host was right. Then we see some crafts dodging fireballs, poisonous smoke, uprooted buildings, cars, trains all dodged by the surgeon (flying is part of surgeon's course) flying the plane expertly whereas on the other hand you see air force one succumbing to the natural disaster.
It becomes a little too heroic when you see people around you dying and the only ones surviving are these few characters start to end. How lucky can you really be when a wave, 35000 feet high is racing towards you. Somethings evade common sense completely.
The upside of the movie is the CG. the earth quakes, volcanic eruptions and yes the 35000 feet high wave coming from the ocean are all very scarily impressive and you are forced to think, man can fight all odds to survive or kill anything or anybody for power, but you cant and don't mess with mother nature because when she gets down to spanking there is no safe spot for you to be in.
This movie is watchable just due to the special effects but it doesn't even come close to The Day After Tomorrow let alone Independence Day. I rate it 5/10.