2012 a visual feast but short on story
Note to director Roland Emmerich: when you put the kind of smack down on planet Earth like you do in the disaster epic 2012, there’s really no need for a storyline. No reconciliation of broken relationships, band-aid jobs on bad parenting, etc., etc. For crying out loud, the planet’s core is melting and the entire state of California is being sucked into a gigantic pit, one city block at a time — I can’t believe I’m saying this, but with the kind of visual feast that would bring tears to Irwin Allen, do you really need a plot?
The destruction goodies really are that good in 2012. Most of what we see is implausible, of course, but when Emmerich puts the pedal to the metal in this, the mother of all SFX vehicles, you’re simply too blown away to think rationally. I mean, the White House has been wiped out before (come to think of it, Emmerich himself blew it to smithereens in Independence Day), but have you ever seen it mowed down with as much creativity as smashing it to bits with the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, courtesy of a mammoth tsunami? Now that’s obliteration!
Unfortunately, like most eye-popping spectacles, 2012 has characters with problems, characters who somehow survive Mother Nature’s freak-out, thus paving the way for a rather bloated, formulaic and inescapably lame third act. That’s the bad news. The good news, there’s actually a quality actor (John Cusack) leading the charge, so at least we get a hint of life in dialogue that could easily be given to cardboard cutouts.
Cusack plays a struggling writer who moonlights as a limo driver. Separated from his wife (Amanda Peet), he spends his weekend with the kids on a camping expedition to Yellowstone National Park. There, he stumbles across wild-eyed conspiracy theorist Woody Harrelson, who predicts the end of the world — y’know, bridges and buildings crumbling, volcanoes spouting from mountain tops, dogs and cats living together — your basic annihilation of all-things-normal.
Turns out, the U.S. government is way ahead of nutty Harrelson. President Danny Glover (let me guess, he’s getting too old for this &%#!) caught wind of Al Gore’s worst nightmare quite some time ago, which is why he gave the green light to an elaborate plan that might — key word, might — preserve a few lives to keep the human race afloat once the fireballs and ash storms clear. But as we all know, getting there is half the fun.
Shameless in its melodrama yet irresistible when it comes to wrecking stuff, you get what you pay for with 2012. It’s too much of a big, dumb soap opera to embrace but it’s so darn good at destroying — well, everything — it’s near impossible to not admire.
Out of a possible five stars, I’ll give 2012 a three and a half.
Jason Armstrong is a movie reviewer living in the Okanagan.
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