22) 2012

Director: Roland Emmerich
Stars: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Thomas McCarthy, Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, Johann Urb
Year: 2009
Rating: PG-13

Fans of Irwin Allen films, cheesy sci-fi movies of the 1950's in particular, or doomsayers who've been predicting - for years - that California will one day crumble off into the Pacific Ocean ... boy, are you gonna love this one. Not content with destroying the major cities of the world in Independence Day, or covering the entire top two-thirds of the world in ice in Day After Tomorrow, here director Roland Emmerich goes for the whole enchilada - all wrapped around an ancient prophecy in the Mayan calendar that predicts the world will end on December 21st, 2012.

Emmerich takes that nugget, slam-dunks a decent cast of talented actors into the storyline he's developed around the prophecy ... and turned it all into two hours and thirty-eight minutes of one hell of a special effects mardi gras that's as big on cheese as it is on entertainment. What 2012 lacks in a believable storyline, well-written dialogue, and Oscar-worthy performances, it sure as heck makes up for in visually-stunning destruction that grabs you by the throat and never lets go ... once everything starts going to hell.

John Cusack stars as Jackson Curtis, a writer of high regard and modest sales who - when in the throes of a book - finds little attention for anything else, including the two kids he occasionally has visitation right to via his ex, Kate (Amanda Peet). Curtis loves his daughter and son, he's just a bit of a scatterbrain, and in proving he can show his kids a good time, he's planned a trip to Yellowstone National Park, just him and the kids, for a camping trip.

Provided, of course, Yellowstone is still there; by the time we meet Jackson Curtis, viewers have already learned that, several years back, a scientist named Dr. Adrian Helmsley had detected a disturbing amount of sun flares ... along with the shifting of the continental plates under the earth's surface, all an indication of the planet's self-destruction. While the powers that be have spent the ensuing years since Helmsley's discovery in efforts to build space-age "arks" to save at least a fraction of the earth's population, Helmsley learns that all signs of the apocalypse have sped up considerably ... with only days left to go before Armageddon.

Meanwhile, in Yosemite, Jackson Curtis meets a nutjob named Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), who mans his own doomsday radio broadcast from Yosemite, which tells listeners about the Mayan prediction and warning them of the end of the world even as he celebrates the beauty of it all. Curtis nods and keeps his kids away from Frost, assuming that's a nut but at least not dangerous ... until some very ugly earthquakes start to happen, and as California literally starts self-destructing around them Curtis rounds up his kids and ex - even Kate's new boyfriend, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy) - and starts their around-the-world-trek, using information gleamed from Charlie Frost, to try get his family to the safe place Frost claimed everyone else is trying to get to, as well.

As if there IS a safe place, once the mayhem starts. Around the world, devastating earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcano-like eruptions begin ripping an unsuspecting world apart ... and this is where the film's stunning visuals take hold, with Emmerich stopping at nothing in some of the most visually mind-blowing, realistic special effects ever committed to film. As Curtis tries to make his way from Los Angeles to China - where the arks are supposedly being hurriedly finished ahead of the destruction - as in the best of disaster films, you have a small group of assembled potential victims running only inches ahead of the devastation, as viewers wonder who will fall and who MIGHT survive.

You may have to check your brain at the door before jumping with both feet into this one, but if you can do so 2012 certainly is as entertaining and substance-free as a super-sized tub of popcorn. At times humorous, melodramatic, thrilling, suspenseful, and downright silly, it's a trip that stretches out a bit too long toward the end ... but is still more than worth the ride. Living in Los Angeles, even I can't look at the mountain view out my office window the same, anymore. *** - Reel Cool