2012: A Review

Note: This post contains some spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the movie yet, please skip this review.

Cast: John Cusack – Jackson Curtis

Amanda Peet – Kate Curtis (Jackson’s ex-wife)

Danny Glover – US President Thomas Wilson

Thandie Newton – Laura Wilson (Presidential daughter)

Chiwetel Ejiofor – Dr. Adrian Helmsley

My husband and I were expecting a crowded theatre when we decided to watch last Saturday. A combination of CGI and disaster is a sure-fire crowd-drawer, after all. Sure enough, the only good seats left were for the 11:50pm showing, and so we snapped it up before someone else “out-booked” us.

Turns out it was a blessing in disguise, because at least our son was snoring happily by the time we snuck out for our movie date (otherwise, I would have been too guilty to leave him behind). Good thing the mall is a short five-minute walk from our place. We even had time for a toffee nut frapuccino before the movie started. But I digress.

First off, 2012 does not exactly have a stellar cast. Cusack will forever remind me of Some Kind of Wonderful, and I was half-expecting him to say, “My future looks good on you.” The point is, he should’ve stuck to being an 80s matinee idol, and I find him totally ineffective in his role. He was still John, not Jackson.

I was also a bit disappointed with how under-utilised some of the actors were. Glover is a good actor, but he seemed to have been reduced to nothing more than a simpering, old, fatalistic politician (not that there was anything he could’ve done about the disasters, anyway). But they could have at least made him a bit more inspiring or awesome. James Earl Jones managed to be even more dignified using just his voice in The Lion King.

Peet was the mother of two kids, and she acted like a terrified mother, which I guess is fine. Any mom would be panic-stricken with the degree of disaster all around. I was sitting in the moviehouse and Peet’s eyes found mirrors in mine. When you watch a movie that claims to be based on something that has a fraction of scientific basis behind it, of course you’d be scared. So maybe the way I felt while watching her was not out of her spectacular thespian abilities, but out of a real maternal fear I had. As for Newton, well, let’s just say she looked good behind the wheel of a TT Coupe in Mission Impossible 2. That’s about it.

The story was poorly written. For a two-and-a-half hour movie, it left a lot of blanks. If you happen to be one of those who have never heard of the ancient Mayan prophecy and the hypotheses (and hype) everyone is attaching to it, you’d probably be baffled why you are looking at such images of destruction. The writers never bothered to squeeze in a decent explanation on the theory, apart from mentioning them in passing. It is strange that the vehicle they chose to kind of explain the Mayan prophecy was a loony guy.

150 minutes of talk-time and you’d think they would have room for that. Maybe they should have edited out some of the useless melodrama. Case in point: a father (a minor character) wanted to say goodbye to his estranged son, and just as the guy picked up the phone and was within 2 seconds of responding, the earth swallowed him whole while his father listened in horror. Was it really that important? I also felt that ALL the sequences involving the cruise ship could have been edited out and it wouldn’t be an issue. I guess they just wanted a touch of Titanic, even if it’s non-essential.

Most of the action sequences felt too contrived. Outrunning a volcanic eruption? Indeed. The loony guy’s scene at the peak of Yellowstone was far too stretched. Escaping a violent earthquake on a limo, when the rest of the city was swallowed up, is simply unbelievable. Plus, being able to take off on a plane just when you run out of runway is too much good luck, especially when the entire planet is having a really bad day.

Personally, the only saving grace were the rare moments of comedic relief, the heartwrenching scenes with children, and those who could not be saved because they couldn’t afford a billion Euros for a seat on the Ark (even if one of them happens to be the ONE who discovered the cataclysmic truth). It shoves in your face just how materialistic the world is, and that the government (particularly the US, in this case) is just one big conspiracy.

Overall, 2012 is a disaster mega-fest that combines the horror of The Day After Tomorrow, Dante’s Peak and Poseidon that falls flat in terms of my expectations. You’ll be riveted by computer-generated tsunamis and earthquakes, but that’s about it. Your only motivations for seeing this movie would be, 1) you’ll be the only one who hasn’t seen it if you don’t, and 2) animation-heavy movies just don’t look as nice on your 42-inch flat screen.

The verdict: 2 out of 5 popcorns. To paraphrase the tagline: you were warned.

The moral lesson: real estate investments in Africa would be a very wise idea. Oh, and Bentleys are really, really cool cars.