HuffPost Review: 2012 (2009)

2012
2009
158 minutes
Rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Shock of shocks, Roland Emmerich's 2012 is actually a relatively satisfying genre picture. It avoids the over reliance on family melodrama and romantic entanglements that plagued The Day After Tomorrow. Unlike that global warming epic, this new entry actually delivers on the big-bucks carnage, as the last two hours have a pretty steady flow of destruction, epic death, and near-misses. But most importantly, by filling the cast with stalwart character actors and letting them actually act more often than not, Emmerich has created the best-cast and most cheekily entertaining disaster film since the The Core. The film snob in you may feel guilty in the morning, but 2012 is a better film than any of us could have expected.

Dragged by my disaster-loving wife (she loves Air Emergency, Surviving Disaster, and the like), I went into 2012 expecting the worst. Roland Emmerich hadn't made a good movie since 2000, and his batting average was a pathetic 2/7 thus far (Independence Day and The Patriot being his lone winners). But the thing actually works. The key is that they spent so much money on special effects that they couldn't hire 'stars'. So instead we have a 2.5 hour disaster movie fronted by Chiwetel Ejiofor (acting god), Oliver Platt (character acting god), and Thandie Newton (a vastly untapped resource). Woody Harrelson has great fun as an accurate doomsayer, and Danny Glover wears his Shooter dentures as the President (dig how he says 'catastrophe' during his speech to humanity). Yes we have John Cusack and his ultra-wholesome family (the Curtis clan) that must be reunited, but they weren't nearly as front and center or as syrupy as feared. Oddly enough, this $260 million mega-disaster epic works best as an acting treat. We couldn't care less about the fate of the Curtis family, but we darn well care about the battle of wills between Ejiofor's occasionally naive idealist and Platt's not-always-wrong realist. There is also surprisingly solid work from such pros as Blu Mankuma, George Segal, and Stephen McHattie (he and Lance Henriksen really need to make a movie together).

The film's biggest fault, ironically, is in its unending disaster scenes. While they are copious and technically impressive, too many of them are burdened with the false suspense of watching our archetypical nuclear family escape yet another round of peril. On one hand, we can ignore the characters in peril and sit back and watch the carnage. But, on the other hand, the film has a disturbing undercurrent, where we are supposed to care more about that the Curtis family survived that flood or this earthquake than about the billions who did not. I've always said that the key to Titanic was that Cameron made you feel for every other person on that ship who lost their lives, rather than making Jack and Rose the only victims that mattered. 2012 tries to acknowledge the death of an entire planet, but too many of the disaster scenes are more about thrilling escapes than tragic annihilation. Owing to the PG-13 rating and the family-friendly target, there is a near lack of aftermath to any of the devastation. There are probably fewer onscreen dead bodies than in the equally bloodless Cloverfield.

Still, there is a minimum of melodrama, and the movie is meaner about life and death that you'd expect (one much-hyped farewell moment doesn't go as planned). It's not art, and there is too much unnecessary humor. During the climax, are we really supposed to cheer the revenge of a spurned woman, knowing that a man and his two young sons have been condemned to death? But it's a surprisingly solid popcorn B-movie that works as big-screen entertainment. The movie gets more juice out of its Ejiofor/Platt verbal duels (Ejiofor isn't always right and Platt isn't just an unfeeling evil bureaucrat) than it does out of its end of the world CGI. Despite the 158-minute running time, the film only drags at the very end, where it reaches its natural conclusion at the two-hour mark but still unloads one more unnecessary emergency to drag out the finale. For much of the running time, the film is almost leisurely, and it's an oddly relaxing experience. Yes, the film kinda more or less avoids dealing with the whole 'everyone on earth is going to die' plot thread, but we've got Deep Impact for that.

Grade: B

 

Follow Scott Mendelson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ScottMendelson

Comments

[scottowego]

I recently watched the original b&w "Christmas in Connecticut". While watching I started thinking that with two wars going on and a trashed economy, why isn't Hollywood producing movies that actually make you feel all warm and cozy and grateful for what we have instead of all this redundant stuff with all the CGI? I'm currently trying to find "The Canterville Ghost" which doesn't exist on DVD yet. I don't plan on paying to see this in a theater. I'll wait and rent it- maybe.

[Uosdwis]

I don't think a single person has pronounced the black scientist actor's name on TV. They probably can't.

[Scott Mendelson - Huffpost Blogger]

Because I care...

CHOO-ih-tell "EDGE"-ee-o-for

[Gronkie]

Sometimes a person wants to listen to classical music and sometimes a person wants to hear the "Greatest Hits of the 80's." Likewise, sometimes a person wants a "thinking" film, and sometimes they just want to watch a movie that lets them relax and enjoy the bombast. A Beethoven Late String Quartet vs. Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. There's room for both in the marketplace and there's room for both in an open-minded person's head. I'm looking forward to seeing 2012. Maybe I'll listen to Mozart on the way to the theatre.

[cyguy]

I agree but sometimes a bad film is just a bad film. This wasn't even a good disaster flick. It was terrible from start to finish. If this is all we have come to expect from a popcorn movie then we have really lowered our standards. It is time Hollywood start actually trying again. There is no excuse for dreck like '2012'.

[Grulg]

This was NOT as good as Big Robots Hitting Each Other Once More Time from this summer. You seemed to Hate that--but c'mon, compared to this--it's Kane.

[Bill Swadley - Huffpost Blogger]

So bottom-line what you're saying here is that 2012 is "good" but only when compared to Emmerich's other terrible films. Thanks for the warning.

[LLNYRN]

Since I went to a cheap matinee, I just went into "2012" expecting it to be a goofball disaster flick. No more. No less.

Though the first half of the film is pretty much silly and SFX-focused, it was the last half of the film that had telling moments in regards to race and class. I found that pretty surprising. The debate between Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt was an extreme acting highlight in this film. There's some stuff in "2012" that's pretty thought-provoking.

I will also say that as someone else here posted, I was a bit traumatized by seeing people falling off of highways, out of buildings, etc.

I gotta admit.
After 9/11, scenes of ultimate destruction that would used to have me gleeful as a kid (Godzilla movies, etc) now tend to make me a bit squeamish.


And I will say that Roland Emmerich is now the Irwin Allen of our generation.
And fans of his films will notice homages galore in "2012".

[MarcTravis]

I usually love disaster movies and this one had really great special effects.
However, I left the movie feeling traumatized by all the death. I felt like I had
PTSD. I was sick to my stomach.
I really didn't expect to feel that way.

[CowgirlAmy]

Horrible horrible film. Really. They couldn't do any better? One of the worst I have seen in a very long time. Way over the top, no plot. I can't say enough bad things about it. This is what Hollywood thinks is a good movie now- blow stuff up, blow stuff up even bigger, blow stuff up and have the hero narrowly escape a dozen times. All of this to make up for no plot. Pathetic. This could have been a terrific movie in the hands of someone capable. I was actually angry that they made a movie this bad.

[wellingtonian]

I got a little sick of the near misses, they just kept coming and coming! Other than that it was pretty good.

[stavros]

My girlfriend suckered me into seeing it.
I would have been better off if she had just suckered me.
Nice visuals but a horrible film.

[NewYorkNews2]

In 2012, neutrinos melt the earth's core:

Strange sidebar: From Wiki:

Pauli effect: Professor W. Pauli, Nobel laureate physicist, (discover of the neutrino).

The Pauli effect is a reference to the apparently mysterious anecdotal failure of technical
equipment in the presence of certain people. The term was coined using the name of the
Austrian theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli.

An incident occurred in the physics laboratory at the University of Göttingen. An expensive measuring device, for no apparent reason, suddenly stopped working, although Pauli was in fact absent. James Franck, the director of the institute reported the incident to his colleague Pauli in Zürich with the humorous remark that at least this time Pauli was innocent. However, it turned out that Pauli on the way from Copenhagen to Zürich had had a short stop at Göttingen rail station waiting for a train connection at about the time of failure.
As Pauli considered parapsychology as worth serious investigation, this would fit with his scientific thinking. In February 1950, when he was at Princeton University, the cyclotron burnt, and he asked himself if this mischief belonged to such a Pauli effect, named after him.

The Pauli effect at the foundation of the C.G. Jung Institute, Zürich 1948, caused Pauli to write his article "Backgroun­d-Physics"­, in which he tries to find complementary relationships between physics and depth psychology.

Worth Reading:

http://plus.maths.org/issue51/reviews/book1/index.html

[Ameriki]

Isn't the earth's core already molten?

[RG5626]

Actually, the core is thought to be made of iron and though not completely solid (it's very hot), not liquid either.

[Billwill2]

What the what???

[Danlantic]

The only time a shower of neutrinos is dense enough to heat anything up is in a supernova explosion. If that happened the earth would be melted anyway.

Check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova

[csmcmillion]

Meh. These special-ef­fects-heav­y films are more like cartoons than films.