Movie Review - '2012'

A common complaint leveled at movie critics, almost exclusively with big budget blockbusters, is that we expect them to be something they're not. True, not everything tries to win Oscars and bad acting and writing can often be overlooked, but some films are so bad even on the basis that they should be evaluated that you can only forgive so much in the interest of entertainment. Within its own little universe, 2012 really only wants to create the apocalypse to end all apocalypses, and it's pretty successful at it, frankly. Director Roland Emmerich is The Master of Disaster, having helmed a few movies that put human civilization on the brink of extinction from one cause or another. There's always an unlikely hero, seldom a likely one, and familiar monuments get demolished rather convincingly through computer animation. There's always a scientist who knows how it will play out, and somehow amid all of this, there's romance in bloom. As you might suspect, 2012 is loosely inspired by the end of the Mayan calendar, which goes dark in December of that year. Some of the scientific theories at work here exist, although they may be shady. Still, unless you know these things going in, it seems fairly plausible: The sun is basically cooking the crust of the Earth and eventually - say, December 2012 - it will finally give way and everything will start to move uncontrollably. You probably don't know there are nearly 10,000 earthquakes a day because most of that movement is so minor you never feel it. But it's always moving, and we know California is overdue for "the big one." So why not? Now, in Emmerich's world where all this is set in motion, does the movie work? More often than it doesn't, and that might be a surprise. Considering his film is over two-and-a-half hours long, it holds together pretty well. That doesn't mean 2012 doesn't have its problems or that the things our survivors live through are in any way acceptable, but the movie just keeps rolling on, and when Emmerich does slow down so we can catch our breath, these characters aren't that bad. There's struggling novelist Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), who drives a limo for a Russian tycoon. He first suspects something's wrong when he and he kids are detained by the Army at gunpoint during a trip to Yellowstone. While there, he meets geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is leading the government's research into a disturbing trend of rising temperatures under the Earth's surface. He knows what it means, but doesn't know how imminent the danger is.

Charlie Frost does, though. Frost (Woody Harrelson) is your friendly neighborhood crackpot, who just so happens to be right about the end of the world, and for the right reasons. He tells Jackson that the government is building spaceships and even has a map. Why not? The guy's been dead-on about everything else. Because of his accidental preparedness, Jackson is one step ahead of, well, everyone in California when he returns there to grab his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and, regrettably, her new boyfriend (Oscar-nominated writer Tom McCarthyThe Visitor) to go...uh...somewhere. With the Earth crumbling below them, all they can do is fly. Good thing the boyfriend has taken two flying lessons. Again, it's wholesale silliness, but what else would you have the movie do? Swallow the hero in a fault line 30 minutes in? I won't spoil the story more than I might have already - in my defense, almost all of the good stuff is available in any trailer you've seen - and I'll skip the obvious dilemma of having the world's communication systems work for most of the action. (Sure, cell phones work on satellite signals...but your phone doesn't have a satellite receiver.) You could nitpick, and that's fine. The difference between 2012 and the second Transformers movie, which also puts the world in computer generated peril is that Emmerich takes the time to flesh out the characters enough that we're willing to go on a very preposterous ride. One final note: Recent disaster movies almost always target New York City. It's one of the most populated and popular cities in the world, and it's full of recognizable landmarks that make for good exploding fodder. If I remember correctly, we only see Times Square once, and the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building never crumble. So that was a welcome change.