In a movie like this, the CGI is the real star, and if you think along the lines of Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow and Deep Impact, all turned up to 10, you'll have already seen this movie. When I say CGI, I mean CGI. Here the film-makers go all out, and it's hard not to feel awed as you watch the entire State of California slide into the sea or huge tidal waves decimate Washington. The action, as usual, centers mainly on the US, with a few token acknowledgements along the way that other countries actually exist, in the form of India and China (and an incredibly stereotypical Britain).

As you'd expect, the script is little more than a series of cliches, delivered in cliche style, by cliched actors reprising the roles of other cliched actors in other cliched disaster films (there are, naturally, the obligatory cute kids), but if you can put all that aside and focus on the unfolding mayhem, you might prise a little sadistic enjoyment from this movie. You won't find any thrills in the acting, that's for sure - John Cusack is John Cusack, Danny Glover is Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson is Woody Harrelson etc. etc. - or in the saccharine-drenched moralising about humanity, compassion, sacrifice etc. etc. - all the things that the US government are so adept at practising in real life (ahem).

In summary, 2012 is a big dumbass action movie made by big dumbass movie executives. I winced at the Bentley advert slapped right bang in the middle of one OTT scene (and it's OTT all the way here - subtlety took a rain check). It's one of those films where you can play 'follow the stereotype' and guess who's going to cop it with zero difficulty. Where the characters have the emotional range of a small tree and the plot holes gape almost as wide as the cracks in the pavements. It's popcorn, it's 'fun', it's done. The preposterous leap into sci-fi towards the end of the film almost passes by unnoticed, the production is so overwhelming. The veiled Biblical message comes over as laughable. America vies for cinematic sainthood yet again. Gauche is the word.

With the scale of the destruction, one can't help but wonder where these film makers will go next. There doesn't seem much ground left to cover unless an imploding universe movie is on the cards. One thing's for sure, as I watched the Earth tremble and shake, the seas rise and continents shift, I couldn't help but wonder that if this truly was the End of the World - Hollywood style - why I wasn't more sorry to see it go.

JB

Great review - love it

Sarah

Americans do love this kind of thing, don't they? I've been watching a documentary series on History (!) called "Life After People". This, too, barely acknowledges that there's anywhere outside the good old US of A for anyone to have disappeared from. (It's all about what happens to our infrastructure and to the animal kingdom after humans magically - and non-destructively - disappear from the world.)

Great review, JB. It ought to be published somewhere.

Alex

the entire State of Califoria slide into the sea - really?
I'll go to see it for that!
Seriously though, that is a very entertaining review. Thanks

I just watched a documentary that I'd recorded from the Discovery Channel, called "2012 Apocalypse", in which the background to the film was discussed. Very entertaining, but obviously nothing more than a crude marketing ploy to get people to watch the film (of which there were several excerpts). Very American, too - many of the supposed mechanisms to trigger the calamity were stated as if factually based by the narrator, and only put into proportion by an expert afterwards. There was none of the balanced pitting of "pro" experts against "anti" experts that you get with, say, Horizon.

Alex

Thanks guys. It does seem a tad hypocritical when one considers the cost of making a movie like this?

Buoyed up by your comments, I've sent this review in to an ezine I know.

JB

I was just about to say, Waxy, that you could make some cash out of your reviews - you really are good at them.
HB x

Cash? From writing? Look Helen, I write Fantasy but there are limits!

Thanks though. I don't mind writing othe odd review here and there but I always publish them under a psuedonym because I really don't want to be a critic.

JB

Woo hoo! I have to add an opening paragraph about the director and the premise of the film, and then the Future Fire e-zine are going to publish this.

Thanks for suggesting I send it out. It's no biggie, but I've not had anything in print for a while so it's a nice little boost.

JB

Congrats!

Sarah

Congratulations!

Cheers guys. It makes a refreshing change to be asked for MORE words instead of less.

JB

LOL Waxy. Could you transfer some words from the Opus? Then you wouldn't be killing your darlings, just transfering their tenancy.
HB x

If only it was that easy!

JB