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.jpg) Roland Emmerich holds a special place in my heart. It’s not a big place, but it’s special. After all, Emmerich was the man that revamped the destruction movie genre. His movies, post “Independence Day”, have been hit or miss for me. When he’s good, he recreates an “IE4” sense of can-do spirit and awesomeness. When he’s bad, he makes “Godzilla” and “The Day After Tomorrow.”
“2012” is Emmerich’s newest attempt at recreating the magic of his best work while blowing stuff up. The story surrounds Jackson Curtis and his family. Jackson, a small time writer, is played by John Cusack, furthering his new career path as a great counterpart to child actors. Cusack is actually really good when he is acting opposite his character’s children, played by Morgan Lily and Liam James.
Jackson takes his kids from his ex-wife Kate, played by Amanda Peet, for a weekend in the Yellowstone National Park. They run into a crazy hippy pirate radio DJ, Charlie played by Woody Harrelson, who tells Jackson of all the crazy things the Mayans predicted would happen in 2012, just a few days from today.
Back in LA, strange things are happening to Kate and her new boyfriend Gordon, played by Tom McCarthy. They are shopping for groceries when they feel a tremor. Suddenly, the entire store rips in two. Having experienced this, Kate requests that Jackson bring the kids back to LA.
None of this is new news for Adrian Helmsley, a scientist at the U.S. Geological service. Adrian is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. Years ago, Adrian sounded the alarm for Earth’s impending to his boss, Carl played by Oliver Platt. Carl had Adrian tell President Wilson (played by Danny Glover) the horrible news. Wilson gathers the world’s leaders together to create a ‘plan B’ in case the world decides to end.
The idea was to make various arks to survive the end of the world. Charlie somehow found out about the arks and let Jackson know that there was still some hope for humanity, even with the very ground beneath their feet cracking. When Charlie’s rants begin to come true, Jackson must find Charlie’s maps to the ark for a chance to save his family.
With all Roland Emmerich movies, it’s best to throw logic out of the window right upon sitting down. Logic and reason do not apply to his world. Unless something glaring pops up (for example, escaping absolute zero temperatures by lighting a Wendy’s grease fire like in “The Day After Tomorrow”), I would never hold a Emmerich film to the same standard as a science textbook. The same logic issues plague “2012” that plagued “The Day After Tomorrow.” Entire buildings break perfectly in half, the Sistine Chapel’s dome rolls around the Vatican, and planes take off during massive earthquakes. It’s the same laughable goofiness that happens in all disaster movies, so it’s not really a knock against the film as a whole. So, with his movies, I look at characters and staging.
Like I said earlier, I actually like Cusack in this movie. He’s not an action star, but that’s his role; a normal man doing heroic things. Cusack and Peet have pretty good chemistry and seem like the type of couple that would break up and still be friends. Cusack is great with the child actors in the film. I could tell that he enjoyed working with them and they lifted their game because of it.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is a wonderful actor who is trying to make a name for himself, but for every scene of depth he has in “2012”, he has an equal number of scenes where he is required to say things like “the tectonic plates are shifting at an increased rate” or “the new estimates are 3%.” For every line he has that says something, he’s also used to say nothing.
Oliver Platt’s character is a strange mix of boss-types. His character never picks a side and comes up with new loyalties on a whim. In the final act, he’s turned into some soulless human hater that has to face off with Ejiofor’s Adrian. It’s a strange clash, seeing that Platt’s Carl was never like that before the end of the film.
There is a strange side story about some Chinese workers that didn’t seem to fit in until the final act. Side stories with President Wilson’s daughter (played by Thandie Newton) and another with Adrian’s father and his father’s best friend seemed shoehorned into an already crowded plot. Adrian’s father’s best friend even has a scene where he calls his family moments before their house is destroyed. Am I supposed to feel sympathetic towards characters we haven’t met before? Harald Kloser and Thomas Wander’s melodramatic score would tell me that I should, but I’ve never seen these people before. Why are their deaths tragic?
There is also a side story with a Russian millionaire trying to escape the mayhem, with the help of his driver Jackson. There are honestly too many characters in this film. The amount of characters is pretty breathtaking. A lot of characters are okay, if they come together at the end to beat a massive problem, but these yahoos are just trying to make it to a boat. They are not stronger than they are individually, so why not make the story small on a huge landscape? Why not cut down the amount of characters and focus on how these events affect Jackson’s family?
Even with all of that, I liked the first hour and a half of the film. The special effects are breathtaking as you can see every dollar they spent on the screen. The action scenes are expertly staged and I found myself getting involved with the tension, even when the scenes were laughable. I bought into the storyline with Jackson and his family. I enjoyed spending time with that part of the cast, even when Carl and Adrian’s storyline came to a standstill.
But, the film can’t sustain itself.
The entire movie falls apart in the last act when the characters begin to have grandiose conversations about the value of a human life and who should get on the ark. The film actually tries to get small during this part of the film and the action sequences get ridiculous. For instance, there is an action sequence with a dog crossing a steel cable before a door shuts. It’s as if Emmerich didn’t know what to do with his characters once he got them to the ark, but he couldn’t just end the movie, he had to say something larger. It doesn’t work and bogs the film down. At two hours and forty minutes, this film was already bloated, long, and could have done without a pacing slowdown when it really needed to power through the final act.
As with much of Emmerich’s movies, “2012” is a mixed bag. The excellent set pieces at the front of the film are quickly overshadowed by the film’s meandering and sluggish finale. It’s not a film a necessarily liked and definitely not one I want to sit through again.
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