2012

It is a somewhat difficult task reviewing _2012_, for it is a film which does not so easily fall on to a conventional critical spectrum.

It’s most winning aspects are also it’s most desperate flaws – it manages to be simultaneously completely moronic and outrageously funny (often unintentionally), and whilst it is distasteful, crass and utterly preposterous, it is also breathless, bombastic entertainment, throwing enough at the screen to ensure that a large percentage of it sticks. In short, it’s so bad, it’s almost good.

{{ quote Whilst it is distasteful, crass and utterly preposterous, it is also breathless, bombastic entertainment }}

In case you hadn’t realised, the world’s ending. Scientists in India have unearthed a shocking discovery – the sun has become increasingly overactive and the earth’s core is heating at an alarming rate. This will result in our planet’s crust becoming unstable and breaking apart, pulling tectonic plates this way and that, inspiring volcanic eruptions, earthquakes so powerful as to show utter disdain to the very notion of a Richter scale and, ultimately, a plethora of global tsunamis which will submerge the whole of the earth’s surface, eviscerating the entire human race. This discovery sparks a race against time to gather the world’s finest minds and formulate a plan which will ensure the ‘continuity’ of our species.

Emmerich wastes no time in establishing his disaster movie archetypes. First up, there’s neglectful father and failed author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) who, in between dodging volcanic fireballs, is trying to reconnect with his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and young children. Second, there’s brainiac scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiewetel Ejiofor), who has his finger on the apocalyptic pulse, and is our go-to man for important updates on the impending Doomsday. Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) is the ostensible villain of the piece, maniacally guarding his politically dubious survival project, effectively ensuring that while the human race has a shot at surviving this catastrophe, the plan will benefit only the most privileged.

Of what there is in the way of plot, _2012_ centres on Helmsley’s attempts to formulate and marshal the rescue operation, and Curtis’s efforts to rescue his own family from the oncoming obliteration.

Taking a leaf from his own disaster movie guidebook, Emmerich leaves absolutely no stone unturned in bringing the apocalypse to the screen. The frequent action sequences are breathtaking, as we witness the eruption of Yellowstone National Park, the literal tearing apart of Los Angeles and the destruction of Washington DC by a tidal wave, the size of which I cannot exaggerate. It is an unashamed, brilliantly executed demolition job.

Emmerich has also done well to recruit actors of discernible talent – Cusack ably moulds his conventional slacker archetype to fit the disaster genre’s need for a hero, and his wisecracking comes as welcome relief from the otherwise unrelenting destruction. Ejiofor takes on the ‘Morgan Freeman’ role of dignified liberal with a conscience, particularly in the absence of the traditionally strong presidential figure. Woody Harrelson, as conspiracy theorist and professional nutjob Charlie Frost, steals the film’s first hour with his splendid brand of cannabis-induced paranoia and philosophising.

There are brilliantly idiotic one-liners aplenty, flaws in logic which will leave you in fits of laughter, and Emmerich manages to keep the tone just the right side of tongue-in-cheek to ensure that you are left in no doubt that this film is just meant to be fun.

However, for a film which has the audacity to bandy about its pseudo-science with gay abandon, there are some things even the most ebullient critic simply cannot forgive. The lapses in logic, whilst hilarious, also seriously call into question the competence of the people who wrote this damn thing. Apparently mobile telephones and the internet will continue to work in the face of on-rushing, gargantuan tidal waves and lava flows.

If, as the film postulates, we had three years to prepare for doomsday, there has been no attempt to digitise any of human culture and what future generations will know of humankind’s works of literature and philosophical thought will have to be located in Ejiofor’s modestly-sized overnight bag.

These quibbles aside, perhaps the worst thing about the film (which is also paradoxically its best thing) is that there comes a point in which the catalogue of destruction begins to push through being exhilarating and enthralling to become merely distasteful. Emmerich takes such glee in flattening everything that you begin to question the ethics behind all of this.

At least _Independence Day_ and _Deep Impact_ offered some hope of being able to vanquish the threat – _2012_ throws any such foolish notion out the window and instead delights in crushing a crowd of people beneath the Sistine Chapel, drowning the sick and injured in Washington DC, and squeals with delight as people plummet to their deaths attempting to find safe haven on the newly-constructed arks.

Emmerich’s focus is very much on the CGI, and the human element is significantly downplayed amidst the melee. I won’t go so far as to cast doubts on Emmerich’s moral compass, but people of a more sensitive disposition might feel a little aggrieved at the ease with which he dispatches the lion’s share of six billion people.

But perhaps I am over-thinking all of this. It’s not like _2012_ gives you breathing space to consider such questions, as we bound along from one global cataclysm to the next at breakneck pace. The film’s denouement drags slightly, and there is certainly some padding which could have been dispensed with the at the start, but in general, _2012_ is a balls-out spectacle of global apocalypse, and it is a helluva lot of fun.

I’m sure a lot of the enjoyment I got from it was unintentional, because the script is packed with pounds and pounds of processed cheese, and it is the stupidest film this side of _Angels and Demons_. But, if you accept it on its own terms, _2012_ is the definition of a disaster film. As a friend suggested, it should have been retitled Apocalypse Movie, such is the orgasmic delight it takes in systematically dismantling the place we call home.