Directed by Roland Emmerich, producer of other disaster movies The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, 2012 loosely bases its theme around the date the Mayans predicted the world would come to an end.
Starring John Cusack as Jackson Curtis, and Amanda Peet as his estranged wife Kate Curtis, this movie sucks the life out of both actors and replaces it with cheesy dialogue, impossible character arcs and more clichés than countable in an overblown tale that lasts about three hours longer than necessary.
2012 – A Disaster Movie Disaster
Bypassing any traces of depth, spiritualism or anything resembling a script, 2012 uses big budget technology to showcase the destruction. Possibly the worst movie of the year, 2012 basically cuts and pastes the best destruction sequences from The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day and tries to pass this off as an original movie.
Apart from a few well-filmed sequences, the movie builds around one-dimensional characters including the divorced couple, the token black strangers (who end up falling in love), the black President (who saves the day) and the crazy man (who lives in the woods predicting the end of the world while waiting for someone to believe him).
Supporting these cardboard characters, a host of other nuts briefly inhabit the screen such as a Russian bimbo who dies because of her bad choices in men and a bothersome boob job, her billionaire boyfriend who paid for the boob job but doesn’t deserve redemption and dies a horrible death, as well as the new man in Kate Curtis’s life who happens to be a plastic surgeon (and who just happens to have been the one who performed the boob job on the Russian bimbo). Just when it seems like this movie couldn’t get worse –it does.
2012 End of the World Movie
Cheap dialogue spews out of the character’s mouths thicker than the lava erupting from the exploding earth. In what has to be the worst scene in cinematographic history, Kate Curtis stands in the supermarket with her new man who decides it would be a great time to discuss their relationship. Still wearing his scrubs he says “I feel like there’s something coming between us”. And right on cue an earthquake erupts spitting the store in two separating them.
Between the well-timed earthquakes and the cheesy dialogue, the movie also contains a plastic surgeon who easily manages to fly jumbo jets when duty calls, flying cars and even a Winnebago capable of leaping the span of splitting tectonic plates. And if that’s not the worst thing ever, this movie contains more product placements for Sony Viao computers and Huggies Pull-ups than a flyer from the local mall.
The Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012, but anyone with half an eyelid open could predict how this movie ends.
For those considering seeing this truly disappointing movie, accept this a generous tip for the current recession - save that ten dollars and rent something classic. For those unwilling to heed that advice, here’s a spoiler - in the end of 2012 everybody dies except the stars, who, despite the odds, fall back in love.
If the next three years contain more films like 2012, the end of the world can’t come soon enough.
James W. Coates - A nomad at heart, James W. Coates has been combining his passion for music, writing and traveling ever since his father packed the family ...
