Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover
Director: Roland Emmerich
Screenplay: Roland Emmerich
Running time: 1 hr 35 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
CRITIQUE:
In Roland Emmerich’s most current cinematic destruction of our planet 2012, there’s a moment in which Danny Glover’s Head Honcho of America convenes other president from various nations in Geneva and announces to them a breaking truth – that the world is going to an end. The proclamation, supposedly grave and momentous, ends up as a joke, and a rather worrying one, for the real truth here is that this film is no such breaking news to everyone who have seen Emmerich’s film catalogue. As we know, he has cinematically annihilated Earth more than once (for references, see Godzilla, Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow), and it’s entirely difficult to take this man seriously the next time he blows up any landmark. To contemplate, he’s either planning to pull off a Guinness Record for a director with a number of disaster movies that could topple both Cecil B. DeMille and Michael Bay films put together, or that he doesn’t have anything else better to do.
The latter is screamingly obvious here. From a poorly written script ridden with clichés to a endless pageant of cookie-cutter characters (the American President, the smart, lovely First-Daughter, the smart-arse-scientist, the failed-writer-with-a-failed-marriage), 2012’s narrative seems to be automated, transcribed by a computer software with a writing system as smart as “Writing a Disaster Movie for Dummies”. Here, in this apocalyptic nightmare state-of-affairs where everyone should be panicking the pants out of themselves, the film still has the chutzpah to slice in some tongue-in-cheek humour; a Schwarzenneger lampoonery, Woody Harrelson’s one-dimensional soothsaying hobo and a Russian tycoon who own a shitload of stash. There’s comedy, yes, and anyone who likes misplaced humour will lap it up. But there’s no ignoring that this is The End of the World, the one your Catholic momma and science-freak grandpa warned you about, and there’s still space for some breathing gag, sure.
Nevertheless, where Emmerich miserably fails with his storytelling and character-sketching flair, he amps up the ante by exponentially magnifying every bit of spectacle that would make your eyes bleed out – earthquake crumbles Los Angeles, skyscrapers tumble and crumble like Lego blocks, Las Vegas transforms into a blazing hell, the ever-present White House being destroyed, and since this is global doomsday, there’s that glimpse from different parts of the globe being ravaged with tsunamis. If that sounds familiar, that is because 2012 appears to rehash Emmerich’s destruction in Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. The thrills also intensify as John Cusack’s man-of-the-day saves his family, as his car strategically dodges quakes and falling buildings. His rivalry with his ex-wife’s new husband is then petered out because they needed a plane and he happens to be a pilot. Wow, we’re supposed to believe this is a coincidence. And by the way, tectonic plate movement apparently happen in a matter of minutes.
VERDICT:
The showmanship of Roland Emmerich only befits the typical present-day Hollywood showground: cardboard-thin, cookie-cutter characters and connect-the-dots narrative coursing throughout a visual bombardment of money-raking spectacles. 2012, whilst engaging in minimal parts, annihilates our planet in a matter of two-and-a-half hours and ends up unintentionally comical, clichéd and vastly cheesy, a self-parody of the genre. This is the mother of all disaster flicks to end all disaster flicks, let’s best hope.
RATING: C
