Review: '2012' flips logic the bird and destroys the world with glee

Columbia Pictures

There's a moment in 2012 in which a limo transporting a family outruns the most epic earthquake ever seen, which includes driving the car Lethal Weapon 4-style through a crashing building and ducking under collapsing highways, and someone sitting behind me said, "Oh yeah, that's believable!"

Was this person not aware that he was watching a movie about the destruction of the entire Earth, as predicted by Mayans over two thousand years ago? With 2012 it is quite simple; it's a big-budget disaster film, loaded with tons of special effects and two-dimensional characters played by a number of very good actors. Everything is destroyed in an over-the-top fashion, and many people die by a variety of natural disaster-related ways. It's a fun movie, though not on the surface. There is no winking at the camera or lots of corny jokes to lighten the mood. It is actually very foreboding, as the movie builds to the impending doom of a world ending. There is no race to stop the world from ending, as it will happen no matter what. The challenge is to save as much of humanity as possible, or else become an extinct species (with just about every other species of animal on the planet).And by no means is this a "shut your brain off" type of review, because that's not how I roll. Keep that brain turned on and enjoy the ideas of Earth crust displacement and magnetic pole shifting; director Roland Emmerich (ID4, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, Stargate) loves to destroy large cities, now he found a way to destroy the world. He put it all in this movie. Take Airport, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Volcano, a smidgen of Deep Impact and a touch of Knowing, roll it all up in a ball and you got yourself some 2012. Massive quakes, super volcanoes (with triple-ringed mushroom clouds), tsunamis, it's all there, wiping out people by the millions. Use all your might to wrap your brain around such an outlandish scenario and think of the possibilities, and think of what everyone would do and how they would do it.That's also a big part of the appeal of this movie; the way the story unfolds is interesting in how the massive plan is not revealed until late in the film, and much of the mystery comes from what the world's governments are doing in light of the devastating geological news that hits their desks. The film actually starts in 2009, with a number of scenes leading up to the titular year, and each scene gets a small title on the bottom saying "2009" and "2010" and so forth, until they get to 2012, which they plaster in huge font on the entire screen, as to say "it is here!" An epic beginning for an epic film that covers a lot of ground. And to cover all that ground is a bevy of excellent actors who normally wouldn't get roles this these, but with all the money going toward rendering water effects and killing hundreds of thousands of digital people, there was no money left over for big stars. So instead they have lower profile yet very reliable actors such as Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men), Woody Harrelson (Zombieland), Oliver Platt (Frost/Nixon), Danny Glover (The Royal Tenenbaums), John Cusack (Sixteen Candles), Thandie Newton (W.), Amanda Peet (Syriana), Thomas McCarthy (director of The Station Agent and The Visitor), Chin Han (The Dark Knight), George Segal (The Cable Guy) and Stephen McHattie (Watchmen). With a running time of two and a half hours there are a number of stories tying all of these people together, and while many of the characters are not given enough time to develop, at least there are good actors in the roles doing the most with what they have.Fans of disaster movies will find plenty to like here, and people looking for something else will probably be disappointed. There are a lot of silly elements to this movie, like how people constantly find themselves saying goodbye to loved ones over the phone (bonus if they get to hear them die), or how often someone or something runs away from a disaster (like the aforementioned family in a limo running away from an earthquake). World famous landmarks are destroyed left and right and certain characters come to ridiculous ends that can only make the audience laugh in their sheer audacity (can you imagine getting hit in the face with an aircraft carrier?). Needless to say, after 2012, it's going to be hard to come up with another disaster movie. Roland Emmerich is going to have to obliterate entire planets his next time out.