I don't really understand why disaster movies do so well in the theaters. I mean I understand, they have crazy ass special effects and people love to look at that, and there's also this morbid fascination that people have with the world ending. I personally hate watching disaster movies, but yet here I am about to give one a semi-favorable review. SEMI-favorable.
2012 is about the end of the world. The end. Naw, I'm just joking. But really, it's about the end of the world. Basically what happens is the sun microwaves the Earth, causing the Earth's crust to soften and start moving around. This causes crazy huge earth quakes, tsunamis, explosions, basically everything bad, ...and awesome to look at on screen. The story follows Jackson Curtis (John Kusak) as a lovable loser/divorced dad/limo driver/struggling novelist as he fights to keep his young kids, his ex-wife (hot Amanda Peet) and her new boyfriend alive. In doing so he meets crazy Charlie Frost (crazy Woody Harrelson) in addition to others and all of the people he meets in some way help him stay alive. We learn that the world leaders have known about this for a while and have created huge "arcs" to keep the people that can afford million dollar tickets to ride alive. Hence the goal of our hero. Get to the arcs.
2012 has all kinds of stars in it. John Kusak, Amanda Peet, Woody Harrelson. Also, Oliver Platt (A Time to Kill, The Ice Harvest) as the "bad guy" as if facing the end of the world wasn't enough. Danny Glover (Lethal Weapons) as the Pres. Thandie Newton (Mission: Impossible 2) as the Pres's hot, brilliant daughter. Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men, Inside Man) as the "good guy" scientist. Lotsa good actors to fill the space between CGI laden Earth damage.
This one definitely has the most massive, visually mind blowing scenes of any of the disaster movies, and for that it gets a semi-favorable review. The only worthwhile performance is Woody Harrelson's crazy dude. You won't really miss anything if you watch it on mute, but its still cool to watch.
I've discovered the formula to making a successful disaster movie. 1. Don't show the billions of people that actually die, because that's just depressing and we don't want to have a depressing movie about the end of humankind now do we? 2. Distract the view from the billions of deaths with mind blowing action scenes and special effects. 3. Don't kill off likable characters, and if you do, make them happy about dying or at least be totally at peace and serene. 3. Have the survivors live so happily ever after that you forget about the fact the a the whole world just died, and have the characters forget that as well. Do all that and you'll have a blockbuster.
I wouldn't recommend you rent this one, but if it's on HBO and you have about 2 and a half hours to kill, then you'd probably enjoy it, but don't expect to really "like" it, just expect to not hate it and really like the special effects.
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