2012 - You Are Warned!

Here's your warning -- Stay the hell away from this moronic movie!

Rarely in my many decades now of going to films have I sat through such a dumb film. It starts stupid and just gets stupider and stupider as it crawls along.

Despite spectacular visual effects in which we see the American west coast dissolve into the ocean and Yellowstone explode into an enormous volcano there is almost no story worth telling here between bombursts. It's one long and unwieldy chase scene, that defies any remote sense of logic.

Now I'm not a Roland Emmerich hater. I liked Stargate a lot, I'll defend Godzilla, and I even find things in Independence Day to enjoy. But 2012 is bereft of such moments aside possibly for the small time Woody Harrelson is on screen ranting and raving.

My daughter and I went to see this turkey yesterday afternoon, a bit of father-daughter bonding time, as she treated me to a cheapie flick. We eschewed the popcorn which they seem to be selling at prices intended to settle the national debt, and we found some comfortable seats in the tiny theater.

The movie starts off okay, though I will admit I avoid Jon Cusack movies most of the time as I find his acting annoying at best, so when the story started with Chiwetel Ejiofor and his discovery of the neutrino problem which presages the destruction of the world I was pleased. But things quickly devolve and we get a half hour of typical disfunctional Hollywood family nonsense before the orgy of destruction begins.

The story's problem is a simple one to diagnose. The main characters have ought not to survived the first forty minutes, nor does their quest to keep alive really add to our understanding of what is happening. They are sidebar characters in a classic disaster movie transitioned to its core and they have almost nothing to contribute to the narrative aside from endless near-death experiences which in themselves become tedious and so spectacularly unbelievable that they rob the film of its impact.

The core of the story is the geologist who we abandon for large portions of the movie so that we can follow the modern Ozzie and Harriet and their dependents across country in one thrill ride after another. The sheer number of coincidences it takes to keep them alive and to keep them moving towards the story's ultimate climax makes the whole thing unravel. The desire to show a "normal" family (white like most of the audience I guess) instead of the black man who at least has a decent reason for knowing how this narrative unfolds is box office, but utterly makes hash of the storytelling.

I can tell you right now if I were the captain of that ark, I'd have shot the snotty know-it-all in the face when he tried to tell me to open my ship up to save people who it had already been decided would die. With billions dead, to stop and save a few thousand even, in the face of long developed protocols which had been developed for that very reason, is madness. It's cruel, but there's no way that happens in anything approximating the real world. But then again this is a movie after all. And I know I'm supposed to suspend my disbelief, but this movie asks too much of me.

I cannot ever remember talking back to a movie as much as this one. If it's not high-minded nincompoops lecturing intelligent adults making hard choices in hard times, it's utter stupidity like stopping to talk and emote while the world literally crashes down around you. Run you bastards, run! Just don't run to see this pile of a movie.

You are warned.

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