December 21, 2012

(Warning! Many spoilers are included in this review)

I almost never want to get up and leave the theatre during a movie. Usually, no matter how bad it is, the movie has some redeeming features or at least will lead to a funny review. The only times I can remember wanting to walk out are: 1. Patch Adams, my least favorite movie of all time, and 2. The Two Towers, because I got so mad about what Peter Jackson did to Faramir.  But I never have actually walked out. And, I didn't walk out on 2012 even though it is the worst movie that I have seen in a long, long time. I mean this movie was just unwatchable. And it has to be bad for me not to like a John Cusack movie. I love the guy. I want him to play me when they do the movie of my life. But he isn't even John Cusack in this movie. No one is anything.

The movie is so bad that the bad science on which it is based hardly makes an impression. I enjoy a good bad science movie like The Core. But 2012 doesn't even have unintentional humor to save it. They don't spend much time explaining what is responsible for destroying the Earth. And even the Mayans who caused this whole 2012 debacle are barely mentioned. There is one brief scene explaining how the alignment of the Earth, Sun and the center of the Galaxy is the root cause. (BTW, the Earth, Sun and the center of the Galaxy line up every December 21st and so far we are doing OK.) Anyway, this alignment causes the Sun to go crazy and shoot off a huge solar flare which is full of neutrinos. This is strange since neutrinos come from the center of the sun. Anyway, they aren't normal neutrinos because on the way to the Earth, they mutate  into something that will get absorbed by the Earth's core (normal neutrinos go right through the Earth) and melt the core. No matter that the Earth's core is already molten. This makes it give off microwaves which  cause the Earth's crust to start shifting around such that there are huge earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis everywhere.

Some scientists have figured all this out, and The POTUS (Danny Glover) and other world leaders have started to build some Arks that will hold about 400,000 of the best and the brightest to try and save the human race from extinction. You know the drill. This has been the plot of innumerable end of the world stories. There is nothing new or interesting in 2012. Ok, there is one amazing thing. Right at the end, the President's science advisor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is able to receive a cellphone call while inside a large steel Ark high in the Himalayas from a Indian friend who is about to be killed by  a very large Tsunami. Thank God the cell towers were still working. 

This brings me back to John Cusack. Disaster movies always have some plucky people who are fighting to save themselves and are invariably not included in the 400,000 chosen to be saved. In 2012, Cusack is a good for nothing writer who ignored his wife (Amanda Peet) and kids until his wife left him. Now she and the kids  are living with her new boyfriend (Tom McCarthy) who is a plastic surgeon. OK, here is something unusual about 2012. The guy that the girl left the hero for, is actually a much nicer and better guy than the hero is. And, of course, this means that he must die. Otherwise, why would Amanda Peet ever take Cusack back.

Anyway, once the world starts to fall apart (literally), Cusack, who for reasons I won't try to explain, but it has something to do with Woody Harrelson, knows what is happening and why. He decides to rescue his family, including the new boyfriend. He needs the boyfriend because he has had two flying lessons and he proceeds to fly them across the globe as they race to get to the Arks in time. There are many, many scenes of Cusack et al. driving or flying through the world as it is being destroyed around them. Repeatedly, they are shown standing and watching 10.0 earthquakes destroy everything around them. The are not thrown to the ground. They are apparently in some sort of force field that protects them from the  devastation. John Cusack and his family are always able to outrun earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. which approach in extreme slow motion.  This is what they call artistic license.

Besides, Cusack and his family, the other important characters are the President's science advisor (Ejiofor) and the President's chief of staff (Oliver Platt). Platt has made a career of playing unlikable characters in a likable way. But here, he is just nasty. He even leaves his mother behind when he heads to the Ark  There are many scenes where Platt argues with the saintly Ejiofor about why they should try to save unimportant people. Platt gets left in charge after the sad sack president decides he wants to stay behind at the White House and get crushed by the aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy. And they say irony is dead. Usually, in this kind of movie, there are many subplots following

different people as they try to save themselves. But in 2012, there is almost none of that. We get a couple of small vignettes about two old musicians performing on a cruise. One of them is the father of the science advisor.  We get one scene about a family in Tibet and then we don't see them again until near the end of the movie, when John Cusack needs to be rescued and they just happen to drive by. The subplot that gets the most screen time is about a Russian mobster, his two kids, and his floozie girlfriend who knows Cusack's ex's boyfriend because he did her boob job. It's a small world when it's being destroyed.

I was really hoping they would all die but instead we get an excruciating climax where Cusack et al. sneak onto one of the Arks and in doing so screw up one of the doors so it won't close right.  Cusack then has to heroically try and fix the door before the Ark crashes into Mount Everest. That's because the water level on the Earth is 28,000 feet above sea level. This is explained by more crustal shifting. Anyway, even though the engines on the Ark (It's called The Nautilus) are fine, Captain Nemo refuses to turn them on to save the ship until the door is closed. No reason is given. It's not clear why all this crustal shifting causes the world including the Himalayas to be covered by water. But this is a disaster of Biblical proportions so build an Ark! We even see Giraffes andother animals  being loaded onto the Arks in case we don't get the analogy.

The director, Roland Emmerlich, has made some very decent disaster movies in the past including Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. But this movie is a fiasco. I don't know what happened but it is awful. Maybe I missed something. If John Cusack is anything, it's that he is alsways likable. Maybe this is the best performance of Cusack's career and he should win an Oscar for making himself really unlikable. This movie is so bad that I don't even feel like it deserves even one beer bottle. Please, don't go and see this movie.