Right out of the gate, I felt sorry for 2012. Poor bastard film that it is, not only being marred by the fact that most people who've seen its trailer have seen all the movie has going for it, not only is it based on something that ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN in three years, but to top it all off I sat in the first row, which made its special effects look so terrible that I had to rely on the "vibrant" storytelling and "rich" character development to enjoy the movie.
Har, dee har, dee har.
Based on an ancient Mayan prophecy that states that the world's mojo will run out on 12/21/12, 2012 concerns an out-of-work writer named Morg-err-Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a Geologist whose name I forgot (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an angry politician of some kind (Oliver Platt), President Thomas Definitely-Notbama Wilson (Danny Glover) and Woody Harrelson as some crazy guy (Himself). They all have a lot of very dramatic scenes where the camera zooms in on their shocked faces, and some of them die, but you won't care which. Then the movie ends and you realize, yes, its been three flippin' hours since you sat your American posterior down, and the groove in the seat now looks suspiciously like moons having sex.
If there's a heavy weight offender, 2012's is completely misunderstanding what makes disasters scary. It's weirdly cagey about showing death, as a super market being swallowed into the Earth early on mysteriously has no casualties. But once people are dying by the tri-county loads and reduced to teeny tiny little CG ants prime for the squashin', planetary genocide becomes a-okay.
Did Titanic teach you people nothing? We want disaster deaths to be so personal, grisly and affecting that when we walk out of the theater all we can talk about is our favoritest. And that's the most dramatic reaction you can ask of us because, honestly, you're a disaster movie and the best you can offer us is some new variety or ilk of indiscriminate maiming. Any combination of kittens, chainsaws, body butter, Toyota Camrys and soup will do.
2012 also mistakes its audience for people who will be sucked into the judgment day drama, offering us scenes like the opening which involves the theft of the Mona Lisa just moments before TWO ZERO ONE TWO appears in gaudy blue, Verdana Ref on the screen. I'm sorry loves, but when the waters rise I'm not going to be bemoaning the death of human culture, I'm gonna be using that hoe as a flotation device.
While we're on the subject of things that do nothing for the movie, our central cast is peopled by dreadful cookie cutter sound-alikes whose entire development comes in a witty little joke they make shortly after they appear on screen. Here's one: "Yes, but my wife's fish curry is still terrible!" Oh, I see what you did there, your wife can't cook! Sir, I love your clever observations and wish to seek out a method to produce your children. Please, please don't die.
Speaking of making fun of women, this is the most curiously sexist movie since The Ugly Truth, which was itself the most sexist thing since the invention of Republicans (ba-zinga!). All the men constantly group together to stare and drool at the ensuing havoc so that they can all agree on the exact phrasing of "Fuck if I know," and all the women are constantly pictured protecting children and crying a lot. Amanda Peet, the female lead's, big dramatic monologue begins with "As a mother," because women aren't really people, they're baby ovens. What, you didn't know? Get preggers now, ladies, or John Cusack will never love you.
Not that you'll care what anyone's saying or doing because every actor is here for their paycheck and no one seems to be having any fun with their role save Oliver Platt. Platt has always been comfortable in any role showcasing his rotund smarmyness, and his snorts of disapproval alone are more alive than the reanimated zombie goon squad he's forced to surround himself with, disguised though they are as “actors.”
We've long exited the age where computer animation continues to impress us, especially when YouTube gives us regular access to real life disasters, and while one might be able to enjoy, say, Transforminators El Secundo for its incredibly sexy, 23 year old, brunette...err...wit as opposed to its speshul effex, 2012's only draw is its over-the-toppery. While there are moments of tension from time to time, those moments are mainly achieved by increasing the bass and volume with each action scene, and by the time you're 45 minutes in it doesn't work anymore and none of us are watching the main characters thinking "Oh noes, they're going to get dry-humped by Death!"
Thinking back, I remember a similar experiment by 2012 director Roland Emmerich titled The Day After Tomorrow, which worked a lot better for two reasons. One, 2012 is a name and a gimmick to cash in on, whereas TDAT was just an event that happened to occur, and was made more threatening by not even having a name. The world wasn't breaking, it was just bending suddenly and violently. And two, TDAT's pay-off was, and still is, peerless and relevant, in that you realize by film's end that the majority of the disaster occurs to America and the once and former superpower must turn to the mercies of the rest of the world, which is a Twilight Zone-caliber scary-ass prospect.
But much like pulling out the magnification slider on GoogleMaps, 2012 reduces the minutiae and relevancy of life to a gaggle of pixels here and there and the tectonic bifurcation of Mozambique is met with a shrug. The final scene, which to avoid spoilers I'll only say involves Mt. Everest and the phrase "we're going to crash into it," is when we'd like the movie, and billions of human lives, to just go ahead and end already.
Instead, the best that can be said about 2012 is that it stayed as far away from ancient Mayan astrological hoohah as possible, so way to suck less, 2012. Way to.
1/5 stars
