REVIEW: 2012

2012 – 2/10
Oh no, a family has become estranged! Quick, a global disaster will help them sort out their problems and realise that they actually do love each other! Luckily, in 2012, Scientists have discovered as part of the predictions by the Mayan’s, the earth’s crust is going to blow up with heat, thus destroying everything. This is the ultimate disaster movie. Literally.
This makes Roland Emmerich’s biggest hit, Independence Day look like Citizen Kane. Cliched line I know, but this movie is full of clichés, I think I’m allowed to use one. Each action sequence involves just escaping the tidal wave/ball of fire/avalanche by one second. Every damn action sequence. The visuals are impressive yes, but, so what. The script is beyond awful and incredibly hammy. We get to see certain monuments destroyed that Independence day and the day after tomorrow didn’t get to include: the Vatican, Mount Everest, the statue in South America, a cruise ship hit by a tidal wave....hey, that was just Poseidon. Or a massive ship hitting a huge ice berg....wait a minute.
The characters have been copied and pasted into this screenplay – if such a thing existed, I imagine it was a few post it notes of texts crammed between ‘blow things up!!!’ Heartfelt Scientist, Aging Captain, Noble President, Father of adorable/annoying children, mad wacky character who is totally going to die etc. The characters, oh wait, these are not characters. Characters just behave so irritatingly, random guy who is not an action star ‘I will sacrifice myself for the lead actors for no reason!’, when confronted with a near death experience ‘Don’t rush me, I need to concentrate!’. Oh, I wonder when fat selfish Russian will survive or not? Or how about bimbo Paris Hilton like woman? Or unfamous step dad? It’s ridiculous that these ‘kill me’ characters are there, as everyone is irritating, I was hoping they were all wiped out. John Cusack phones in a charismatic free performance as the ‘every day man’ hero.
The government decide to pick the intelligent and the rich to survive in some boats. At one point the president utters, ‘perhaps we should have just held a lottery, it would have been fairer!’. Well, Deep Impact used that plot, so this was the next best thing.
Apart from a great wacky turn by an almost unrecognisable Woody Harrelson and the sight of the Queen hurrying into a boat with her corgis, this is an entertainment free zone. Strangely and distractingly, the cameras appear to have switched toward the finale, the quality not out of place of a BBC Doctor Who episode. Did the film makers run out of money, break all the other equipment or presumed by this point the audience would have gone beyond caring? The premise of the tense free finale involves a wire caught in a cog. The cast apparently stumbled on the Poseidon set and decided to borrow the cheesiness that was present there. Roland Emerich includes another ‘the dog survived!’ moment, I was unable to tell whether this was a wink to the Independence day geeks or if he just really loves dogs.
There was so much potential for this to be a roller coaster ride with impressive visuals, scares and excitement. It was simply vomit inducing awful, beyond hammy and massively overlong. It is not a good sign of a film when it is near impossible to stop the physical reaction of shuddering down your spine, unable to contain audible groaning and hoping it is raining outside when the credits finally roll so you will be able to wash yourself clean again. Creaky visuals, a lack of imaginative or exciting score or awe inducing cinematography lead nothing positive. The overuse of ‘emotional’ phone calls to secondary characters you do not care at all about, even less than John Cusack and clan, is unbelievable. One such call is actually interrupted with an explosion, which I thought thank God, I don’t have to put up with another ‘you remember that time we....or how much you remind me of your mother...’ speech.