"When they tell you not to panic, that's when you run!"
I love disaster movies. I have the remake of The Poseidon Adventure on DVD. I've seen the TV version and Beyond The Poseidon Adventure. The Day After Tomorrow? Check. The Towering Inferno? Check. Earthquake? Check. The Airport movies? Yep. Now these movies are usually bad, but they are also so bad they are good. 2012, well, it cries for a RiffTrax.
My biggest problem with 2012 is the fact that it plays the standard Roland Emmerich does disaster movies playbook the whole way. (You know, secret science stuff, no one believes the truth, montages of random characters that no one cares about really because they are cardboard stereotypes, epic sweeps of far away countries also affected by the disaster accompanied by sweeping music, lots and lots of explosions and CGI.) It opens with some scientists finding out some really, really bad news. They rush to tell the politicians, and then secret stuff starts to happen. Fast forward a bit. The bad stuff starts to happen for real. John Cusack stumbles upon it, the everyman with the troubled family life, and then proceeds to run like crazy, everyone yelling a whole lot because everything is.so.very.important. Will they survive? The fact is it's very hard to care because they just don't create any sympathy with the viewer. They are so cardboard you just don't care. You even get the "Today is our Independence Day!" speech. Wait, twice!
Okay, well so what's good? The initial John Cusack grabs the family and races California crashing into the ocean in a limo was pretty damn hilarious and yet awesome at the same time. I imagine seeing it on the gigantic screen would have been fun, even if it was super heavy on the CGI. I actually laughed out loud. The number of times they escape disaster by the skin of their teeth is so many I lost count. It gets to be ridiculous way too fast. A character actually says, "Oh God, not again." I agree.
Maybe 2012 isn't so bad. Or maybe it's so bad it's good, if you can get past the awful, awful heavy-handed hammy acting. I don't really know yet. I might have to watch it again to tell for sure. But I will definitely skip the credits. One can only take that song once.
Rating: I'm not even sure. 3ish Purrs, maybe?
About Me
- Media Kitten
- I'm just your normal 30-something that is pretty much obsessed with horror movies, reading as much as humanly possible, and painting and drawing as much as I can squeeze in between working my day job. I really like stories about the end of the world, but don't hold it against me. I love watching hockey. Sushi is super delicious. I am on a mission to watch as much Murder, She Wrote and Matlock as it takes so that my DVR thinks I am an old woman and starts recording Golden Girls. I'll watch movies of any kind, but I still can't figure out why Woody Allen still gets to make them. I'm not even that picky about what I read, but I am picky about what ends up in my library permanently. Oh, and I have a Mini Countryman with a Muppet fetish. His name is Gonzo. Say Hi Gonzo.
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