Movie Review: 2012

2012 is the latest disaster film from director Roland Emmerich (Godzilla, The Day the Earth Stood Still). In 2012, John Cusack (wearing his Gross Point Blank uniform) is a has been novelist who now is a divorced limo driver with two kids and an ex- wife, played by Amanda Peet, that is dating a successful plastic surgeon. On a camping trip with his kids, he meets Woody Harrelson who explains about everything Cusack needs to know about the Mayan myth about 2012, and only days before it actually happens. The film has many subplots and intertwining characters that revolve around all the world’s powers knowing about the disaster and preparing for it in advance by building ships with open seats that range up to one billion dollars. This film also stars Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, and Danny Glover as the U.S. President.

Surprising enough, the best part about this film is the special effects. Not every special effect shot is great. But many of the wide shots of the city falling and crumbling around the main characters have great detail, and even find a way to look great without being cheesy. Some may argue that the filmmakers should have resorted to the traditional miniatures and models. But if that was the case, what would be the point of making another disaster film with miniatures and models again? The CGI team did a good job, or at least a better job than expected.

However, the story in the film is either ludicrous or boring or maybe both. Obviously, the global disaster is fictional, but the narrative that I am referencing is the one of the Cusack’s character, the ex-wife, the kids, and the boyfriend. It is almost literally the same setup as Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. A divorced dad with two kids, the daughter who loves him unconditionally and the son who hates him, are having a custody weekend when disaster strikes. Only, here instead of the main character fighting to return to the kids to their mother, Cusack does so at the beginning of the movie. He then picks up the ex-wife and her boyfriend for a plot device that is only served so that the boyfriend can fly the plane around. (Again, another film where annoying characters are picked up and never dropped off). Amanda Peet’s character is as useless as an astray on a motorbike, and the boyfriend won’t die soon enough.

It is interesting how a limo driver and a guy with barely any flight time experience are suddenly the greatest stunt drivers/pilots in the world once disaster strikes. It is too bad that with the level of special effects in the film that the filmmakers didn’t spend a little more time on script, acting, and over all just take themselves more seriously. Not that the film has jokes or is corny, because it isn’t. But there is just a little bit too much optimism in the air when even the dog survives the disaster. With all the people that die in the background in this film, not enough of the characters in the foreground get killed off, and in time to save the movie.

Grade: C-