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2012

Movie Grade: B+

Thank god. After the emotional rollercoaster that never made its way back to the station with The Box (I'll get to that review in a bit), I was dreadfully worried that Roland Emmerich's theme park ride of a film would disappoint in similar fashion. It's not that I particularly hated The Day After Tomorrow (the less that is said about 10,000 B.C. the better), but the spark that brought the audience to its feet in Independence Day has managed to elude the maestro of disaster in the intervening years. Just having "Roland Emmerich" and "disaster" in the same sentence has gotten cliché, and I'm happy to say that with his grandest and most destructive film yet, he has reached the pinnacle of the scope and scale that you can fit into a 2-hour motion picture.

It doesn't get any bigger than this, and I'd like to believe that the misfires since Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum saved the planet in terrifically entertaining fashion have been experiments on the part of Emmerich, looking at the genre from different perspectives, as preparation for this movie. Whatever you think 2012 is going to be when you enter the theater, this is a movie that manages to deliver the goods on virtually every level, even if the quality level of those goods isn't enough to make it a "great" piece of filmmaking. It is perfectly happy with the type of film it sets out to be, and the fact that it knows its boundaries so well means that it wrings every last bit of action and emotion from each scene, flowing effortlessly from massive special effects to interpersonal drama. I was shocked at how personal the movie was at times, with a story painted on such a broad canvas that has more than enough heart to see the audience through the darkness.

Big props go to the casting people behind this behemoth, as they found literally the only people I can think of who could give us believable emotion when faced with overwhelming amounts of green screen and SFX laden material. I will believe John Cusack is staring at a volcano exploding as he runs for a plane in mid take-off, I will believe Amanda Peet as his estranged wife who is juggling responsibility for her family and a desire to reconcile what is happening to the world around her, I will believe Chiwetel Ejiofor as almost anything, especially a scientist who becomes a key part of the cabinet, and I will believe that America would elect Danny Glover as president of the United States over just about every actor who has played a president in the last 20 years. I save the best for last, as special recognition has

to go to Oliver Platt's terrific performance as senator turned advisor turned leader who imbues the other side of each debate with enough gravitas and charisma that you know he believes every line he's delivering. Between Cusack and Platt, the audience is swept up on this journey and feels each horrific event through the cast, including a handful of wonderful cameos I won't spoil here. I wasn't expecting anything close to strong writing or strong character work from this one, and it elevated the whole movie well above my expectation level.

The effects are"¦ well"¦ you need to see this on as big a screen as humanly possible. I'm not sure if they're offering any IMAX prints, but if they aren't, they are wasting a phenomenal opportunity. The special effects work here is akin to a national geographic special about the end of the world, and to say that many of the sequences will have you holding onto the arms of you chair is a gigantic understatement. Part of me doesn't ever want to see another disaster movie again, as this would be the perfect cap on a legacy that goes back to the original Poseidon and The Towering Inferno. This level of production and special effects research is the culmination of everything movies have been working towards since the first computer generated effect, and though I trust in James Cameron to bring things to a whole new level with Avatar, this is like the end of a generational era in blockbuster filmmaking. They don't make movies like this anymore, they probably won't try to again. If this is going to be the nail in the disaster genre's coffin, I can't think of a better swan song. Perfect it certainly is not, camp is always waiting in the wings, and it doesn't try to be more than a B-movie because that would lose it a lot of the charm that keeps us engaged. Bravo Mr. Emmerich, you may well have crafted your masterpiece.

Movie Grade: B+

Synopsis:

An epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors.