2012

DIRECTED BY: Roland Emmerich
STARRING: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Oliver Platt
CERT: 12A

Director Roland Emmerich loves to wreck stuff. And he doesn’t mind if the odd human happens to get in the way.
In fact, the man doesn’t seem to be happy unless civilisation as we know it is in grave peril. If it isn’t giant lizards flattening skyscrapers (Godzilla) or aliens hijacking the planet (Independence Day), it’s climate change putting half the world under water and ice (The Day After Tomorrow).
How do you top that? Only one thing you can do, really – destroy the place altogether. And so he has.
The nail he hangs his movie on is the ancient Mayan calendar prediction that the world will end on December 21, 2012. The ancients saw it in the stars and sure enough, the sun turns out to be the culprit, overheating the earth’s core until the crust begins to destabilise.
Government geologist, Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor) warns US President, Thomas Wilson (Glover), and Chief of Staff, Carl Anhauser (Platt), that the end is nigh, but official word to the masses comes straight from Douglas Adams: DON’T PANIC.
Even as California starts to fall apart.
Meanwhile, limo driver and failed science fiction writer Jackson Curtis (Cusack) is camping with his kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily) in Yellowstone Park, where he has an unexpected run-in with the military at a dried-up lake and has an encounter with wild-eyed radio host Charlie Frost (Harrelson) the conspiracy guy who knows what’s really going down and has a very funny blog to illustrate his theories.
But it takes a chance remark from a couple of snotty kids to convince Jackson that mad Charlie might be on to something and so he dashes off to rescue the kids, their mom (Amanda Peet) and her new boyfriend Gordon (Tom McCarthy) just as all hell breaks loose and the West Coast disappears into the ocean, quickly followed by the rest of the country and selected tourist destinations around the globe.
But never mind those couple of billion annihilated losers. For our plucky dysfunctional family it’s next stop China, where apparently salvation awaits for the chosen few – and anyone else who can afford it. Along the way, our heroes hook up with some Russian friends (and a dog) and Jackson gets to utter the almost immortal line, “We’re gonna need a bigger plane.”
Meanwhile our tormented scientist is en route to the Himalayas aboard Air Force One, no doubt already working on the rousing speech that will soon inspire all of humanity. Which will not be that many humans, after Mr Emmerich has his way.
2012 is about as dumb as a movie can be without letting a couple of chimpanzees loose with a laptop and a camera. And given the quality of the writing here some of these fine actors are almost visibly choking on their lines maybe that’s a tad unfair on the monkeys.
It’s also a ridiculously bloated beast of a film and Emmerich and his co-writer Harold Kloser could have done with shedding at least a half hour from their script. Nobody would have missed those scenes on board the cruise liner, for example. Nobody except the director, that is, who clearly felt the need to give a nod to his hero and fellow disaster master, Stirling Silliphant (The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure).
But despite its glaring stupidity and the fact that the incredibly executed carnage gets tiresome quickly (how jaded have we become?), it’s still an enjoyable spectacle. And it’s hard not to root for these cardboard cut-out characters or even mourn their silly demise except, of course, when it’s that guy you just KNEW wouldn’t survive. And no point feeling guilty about that after two minutes, even his friends and family don’t miss him.
Credit must go to the cast, who try to make the most of what’s put in front of them. John Cusack is always a pleasure to watch and he’s perfect as the everyman action hero.
Chitwel Ejiofor brings more quality to proceedings than the script deserves and Zlatko Buric provides some welcome comic moments and an immense physical presence as Russian billionaire Yuri.
But it’s Woody Harrelson who steals the show in his brief role and his video presentation of the doom that awaits mankind is the highlight of the movie. Ninety minutes of crazy Charlie and his cheap animated dinosaur would have been a lot more fun than two-and-a-half hours and $250 million worth of even the most dazzling destruction.