2012, movie review

Roland Emmerich has been responsible for a number of end-of-the-world movies, but apparently 2012 is his biggest yet. The only other one of his movies I've seen is Independence Day, and a number of parallels can be drawn. There's the fact that things always happen in America - in this case it's an Indian researcher who discovers the first signs but it's the Americans who lead the way in acting on them. There's also the huge scale of effects - the catastrophe spans the entire globe as huge chunks of earth are ripped away, entire islands and landmasses become nothing but molten lava, millions of people are wiped out in minutes. And there's also the close-calls for the heroes, who are snatched from danger just in the nick of time. Literally. Unbelievably. And multiple times, which makes it all the more unbelievable.

Despite the many clichès and terrible segues and huge sound effects and overbearing music, Emmerich manages to redeem this movie halfway through when the emphasis turns from disaster element to the human element. The cast is really good, and you actually care what happens to John Cusack and Amanda Peet and all. There are some really big eye rolling moments and more than a few overly sentimental ones, but there are a number of laughs to lighten the load and on the whole it's not a bad way to spend 2.5hrs. Yes - it's very long, but you could do worse.