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    2012

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    Every time I watch “2012″, it gets a little worse. To be fair, half of this movie is downright awesome. You’ve got every type of disaster (except maybe for tornadoes) ganging up to try and kill John Cusack. The second half is when it gets rough with one cliché after another and many predictable developments.

    The Mayans predicted it, but nobody listened. As December 21, 2012, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) is the downtrodden divorced father of two children who have fully embraced their mother’s new boyfriend (Amanda Peet plays the mom, Thomas McCarthy her boyfriend, Gordon) Meanwhile, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a scientific advisor to the president of the United States (Danny Glover), who discovers that the Earth is doomed. While Jackson and his family dodge a plethora of disasters, they encounter a Russian billionaire (Zlatko Burić) who has secured himself a ticket to safety courtesy of a shady international organization. There are a whole lot of other characters all trying to make it out alive as the world ends.

    I love the first half of this movie. Say what you will about Roland Emmerich’s films (I like “Independence Day”) but if the guy knows how to do one thing, it’s destroy everything. In most disaster movies you’ve got a couple of big events. In “2012″ you’ve got volcanoes, tidal waves, earthquakes reducing entire cities to smoldering wrecks. The death toll is apocalyptic and it’s glorious. You haven’t seen real movie destruction until you see a car drive through a collapsing building, or you see an entire city snap in half and sink into the ocean. If I ever manage to obtain a time machine and wanted to mess around with people from the past, I’d take clips of this film and show to people. They would go out of their minds and burst into tears because the special effects are incredible. The first 79 minutes will so thoroughly quench your thirst for destruction that you won’t ever feel the need to see another disaster movie.

    “Did I just read something about ‘the first 79 minutes’? ” I’m afraid that you're correct. This film has many flaws, but they don’t hamper the enjoyment you will have while entire cities are torn to shreds… but then “2012” lasts a bloated 2 hours and 38 minutes! The parade of disasters sent from up above at first as though they’re on a mission to kill Jackson, but in reality, are sacrificing billions… so he can get back together with his wife. Why else would every chasm, collapsing buildings, and mound of lava always direct him and the mother of his children together? Poor Gordon doesn’t stand a chance when God himself is forcing these two to join forces in order to save their kids. You might as well give up. Your odds of getting the girl are nill. When the movie is interested in reducing the human population to something under a thousand, it’s consistently enjoyable. What’s tiresome is scene after scene of Jackson and his family dodging every cataclysm to the point where they’re outrunning, outracing or out-flying Mother Nature itself.

    The other problem with this film is that there are way, waaay too many characters. I get the idea. I don’t mind the “coincidences” of so many people that know each other or are somehow connected crossing paths. It serves the film’s message and theme. My issue is that it causes the story’s tone to vary too much. In a scene, we can see people bawling as they helplessly witness vehicles exploding and families being swallowed up by the earth. Next, cut to an ironic scene where two Jazz musicians sing about it not being the end of the world. With the overabundance of characters, we have half a dozen plots to wrap up and a running time that’s way excessive. The writers spent far more time dreaming up ways to kill people than to flesh them out, resulting in every narrative shortcut in the “disaster movie book” playing out. I could have done without the stereotypically evil Russian, the manufactured villain, the pickle-eating conspiracy theorist (played by Woody Harrelson) and the president’s daughter (Thandie Newton) for example. No one is coming to see this film because of the drama, but we’re all forced to sit through it and trust me, it does not pay off.

    “2012” has some dynamite special effects and when it comes to the Earth trying to kill people, and succeeding, it can’t be beaten. Too bad to see all of this spectacle you have to sit through bad jokes and equally cringe-inducing drama. I like the first half but that second half makes me wish this was on VHS so I could “lose” tape number two. On Blu-ray, on a big TV with the sound cranked up, it’s dumb, fun entertainment but it’s still not good. (On Blu-ray, June 6, 2015)

    5
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    adamwatchesmovies@  31.12.2017 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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