2012

This is one movie where they needed more runway. Some of the main characters were in serious trouble with the lack of runway in LA, Las Vegas, China and perhaps another location I am overlooking.

This is another disaster movie. It is not any better than the rest, it is just longer. It is built on the same premise and sequences as The Day After Tomorrow. It has the same tempo. Character introduction, life issues, family situations, and dire warnings. This time the president does something, in Tomorrow they hesitated. Both movies knocked the current sitting president, respectively. Which in this case, for Hollywood to toss any slight towards Obama is impressive and bold enough in this politically correct world.

John Cusack is one of the standout characters in this movie. He is a former writer turned limo driver named Jackson Curtis. He seems to be able to get things done. His ex-wife is Kate Curtis played by Amanda Peet. Inside Man's Chiwetel Ejiofor is one of the heroes as well, he is Dr. Adrian Helmsley who is the Dennis Quaid of this movie. Mission Impossible II's Thandie Newton is here. She is still skinny and basically unappealing. She is Laura Wilson, daughter of President President Thomas Wilson played by Predator II's Danny Glover. Glover is noble in this movie unlike in reality where he stands by spitfire, rabble rouser, two bit dictators like Hugo Chavez. A Time to Kill's Oliver Platt makes his presence known. He is the chief scientist who starts out honorable but looks pretty bad in the end. Ofcourse he has a tough call to make at the climax. He is Carl Anheuser and quickly takes a liking to Helmsley. The crazy Randy Quaid character, from Independence Day, in this movie is none other than a former bartender named Woody Harrelson. He is Yosemite's Charlie Frost who has his own radio show, is following the government's movements and who lives in a camper in the middle of the forest. How he pays for food is unknown. But he is not walking around in Abercrombie and Fitch's latest gear either.

This movie has the same tempo, the same flow as The Day After Tomorrow. It is just another 30 minutes longer. In Deep Impact, our government had a massive shelter built. In this movie, there is massive ships built that mainly float but seem to be able to operate a little like submarines. They can take a pounding and seem to be able to hold several thousand people each. The top governments of the world, perhaps the G20, are in the need to know. Each government has chosen, with the help of geneticists, they have cultivated the strongest and healthiest people to begin anew. The day of reckoning has come.

The Day After Tomorrow was about global warming. So that was an environmentalist dream show despite it being total hogwash. 2012 had the same absurdity accept it was just a natural phenomenon. It was not explained well, it was explained in tidbits. Frost and Helmsley provided this critical information. The Mayans were mentioned with their apocalyptical predictions about the year 2012 being the end of the world. Or atleast as we know it. The plot behind this movie was that the planets would be aligned, sucking extra heat from the sun, which would heat up our core, and cause the surface of the planet to become unglued. Something like that. Yosemite turned into the largest volcano in the world according to Frost. According to what I have read, it would be Yellowstone to watch out for though. Frost dies where he lived and loved. But Frost had the map that Curtis sought, Frost knew the governments were building something massive in China. Apparently, not even aircraft carriers were safe in the oceans. Considering one plundered onto the top of the Nations Capital building because a massive tital wave just picked it up and dumped like it was a child's play toy.

Like The Day After Tomorrow, the events just happened so quick. Very little warning, which is just absurd. Mother Nature does not change that quickly, it takes decades and perhaps centuries for massive change. The world has never changed that dramatically in that short amount of time. It is pure fantasy, about as realistic as Harry Potter. The world loses about 4.5 billion people in The Day After Tomorrow. 2012 out does that, it seems about 6 billion people would die if the surface of earth becomes as gooey and solid as play doe. There could be some survivors in Kansas City perhaps, and other cities. This movie had the poles shifting, Wisconsin would be the new south pole. At the finality, they were headed to The Cape of Good Hope. The cataclysmic changes make this the landmass to seek, it was not the new roof of the world.

This movie did not show any animals dying which is what would have happened. There would be mass extinctions. Even whales would not have been able to dive deep or fast enough to avoid waves like that. Hawaii was obliterated in fire and ash and lava. Frost's cartoon video he made up had a small cartoon Tyrannosaurus Rex utter something like: "here we go again." But this is not what wiped out the dinosaurs, it was a asteroid that smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula. And even that did not wipe out the dinosaurs in a matter of moments.

Curtis was with his family and Kate's boyfriend in an escape scene in LA where they barely escaped. It was just a pile of explosions and crashes as the earth just picked up part of LA and dumped it on another. The characters were in a small airplane that would not have taken that long to gain altitude and they flew by a number of falling buildings. They made LA seem like Hong Kong and Houston combined, why could not they not just fly in a steeper gradient I do not know.

This movie was was decent. It was not boring. I would like to have seen a massive mound of sand being moved around. There are masses of sand in the middle of the Arabian peninsula for instance.

When did this movie knock the sitting president? In the middle of this so called epic, Helmsley was speaking to his father who was on a cruise ship since he is a jazz musician and Helmsley told his father they have ordered the White House to be cleaned out. His father replies, "it is about time they clean out that house." Not bad, I wish Obama would be cleaned out too. The sooner the better.

In end, what was this movie about? There was some honor and devotion tossed. Some hard work, but this was the epitome of a movie with mindnumbing and pulsating action without end and point.

I allocate this movie two stars.**