Review: 2012

What happens when you give a writer-director infamous for over-the-top, visual-effects-heavy, plot-loose films $200-million and a greenlight to do whatever he wants? 2012 is what, and it certainly doesn’t thwart any expectations. It's exactly what you'd expect from giving Roland Emmerich a blank check and a pat on the back.

It seems almost senseless to give an overview of the plot, as it bears little to no relevance to your enjoyment of the film. In fact, the less you pay attention to it, the less holes you’ll be poking through it throughout the film. Even disregarding the typical disaster movie's pseudo-science, the film is not particularly well thought-out. Inconsistencies, discrepancies and just flat-out unrealistic scenarios run rampant throughout the fairly simplistic storyline.

It may have simplistic premise, but there is not a simple story at all.  In fact, the continuously growing cast of characters weighs the film down significantly, and adds to the 2 hours and 38 minute runtime in a very sluggish way. We are expected to track the stories of a number of cardboard cutouts that are not interesting, original, or worth caring about. The ways in which the film senselessly, and seemingly randomly, kills them off prevents any meaningful character development or empathy from the audience. All semblance of story in this film is really a composite of the crème de la crème of hackneyed disaster movie clichés. From the characters, to the oft-repeated scenarios, to the plot’s development, there’s very little here in that we haven’t seen many, many times before.

However, I am sure most are not looking for a deep or memorable story coming into this theater. The real question then, does the film come through with its advertised destruction? I can say quite frankly that the visual effects are, for the most part, stunning. While not quite photorealistic, they are so damn close you will seldom know the difference. There are a number of shots in this film that are nearly breathtaking in their imagination and scope.

^{Trust me when I say that a screen-cap does not do this moment nearly enough justice}

Unfortunately, the action seldom pays due deference to the potential of the effects. Often bordering on self-parody, many of the disaster scenes seem more likely to elicit laughter than any sense of suspense. This is a product of not only some extremely cliché, unrealistic, or otherwise uninteresting situations, but also of the very unambitious acting. The cast is solid, if not stellar, but their performances are not. While the piss-poor writing is probably as much of a cause of this as the actual performers, this does not excuse the overall lackluster performances. For the end of the world, they sure don’t seem very interested.

^{You're going to see a lot of this expression}

With its extremely long runtime, its lengthy list of characters, and its gradual destruction of literally the whole world, 2012 was meant to be an epic. Sadly, its gorgeous visual effects and set-pieces are too often separated by long stretches of extremely uninteresting and unoriginal exposition. You can often see what Emmerich was aiming for in these moments of attempted character development, but they, almost without fail, fall flat.

2012 is Roland Emmerich’s Transformers 2: unlimited budget, unbridled imagination, and absolutely no clue. It was meant to be the disaster movie to end all disaster movies, and in many ways, it succeeds. However, the real strengths of the film are too often ignored in favor of lengthy sequences of unoriginal characters having uninteresting conversations. It was meant to be awe-inspiring, but is more likely to bore. And while my criticism may sound harsh, I will admit that for what it’s worth, I do not regret having paid to see this spectacle.

I am awarding this film a score in the range of the 6s, but I do so with a word of warning. This movie was not meant for rental, it was not meant for streaming; it was not meant for anything but a massive theater screen and a blaring sound-system. If you have any desire to see this film, now is the time to do so; to see it presented in any other way would be a waste. Those of you who will be seeing this film, regardless of my review, probably already have. Those of you still on the fence about it, you might be pleasantly surprised, but I wouldn’t count on it.

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