To say that 2012 is the ‘mother of all disaster movies’ would be both a true statement and an insult to disaster movies. It cannot be denied that for wholesale destruction and death count this film has it all, bar the actual planet exploding like Alderaan being hit by the Death Star. But in doing so, 2012 teaches the viewer that gluttony is not a healthy virtue by any account.
So the end of the world occurs in the year 2012, just as the Mayans predicted. During this event, an Ordinary White American Divorced Family Man (played by John Cusack) fights to save his family whilst navigating a series ‘talking’ scenes (mostly people crying into telephones) which link one stupendous, special effects-riddled, scientifically-implausible, action sequence after another. Danny Glover turns up as the President of the USA.
It’s hard to put a finger on what hurts this film the most: the fact that, at an unrelenting 158 minutes, your eyes actually get tired of seeing things blow up and irritating people perish, or that the film only serves up the same special effects and migraine-inducing sound design you’ve seen and heard before in far better movies, just cranked a few notches higher.
2012 definitely delivers what it promises: mass-death, destruction, mayhem, all white-washed into PG-13 entertainment. Anybody who enjoys this particular genre will get their money’s worth but those with a nose for plausibility may find themselves weeping into their popcorn by the end.
