Cataclysmic disaster and apocalyptic doom, as foretold by Hollywood, have a way of bringing together broken families, revealing the unseen heroism of deadbeat dads and neatly disposing of their rivals.
This, too, is the micro-level drama of 2012, the latest nihilistic disaster flick to revel in the destruction of the planet. John Cusack plays the castoff father (Jackson Curtis), a failed novelist getting by as a limo driver. We greet him as he rolls out of bed, spilling his copy of Moby Dick as he rushes out the door, disheveled and late for a camping trip with his kids.
His ex-wife, Kate (Amanda Peet), has shacked up with a plastic surgeon named Gordon Silberman (Tom McCarthy) who drives a Porsche, an obvious clue that we're not meant to like him.
When the apocalypse comes, Gordon, for a time, proves quite useful as an amateur pilot. But it's no spoiler to say Gordon is not long for this world -- after all, he stands in the way of Jackson's redemption.
The Curtis family may be our ground-level protagonists in 2012, but the ground is shifting. Because of explosions on the sun, neutrinos (that old action-movie villain) are heating up the earth's core and will soon destabilize the planet's crust, birthing volcanoes and shifting tectonics.
Hip to this development is government scientist Adrian Helmsley, played by the exceptional Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose gravity -- best seen in 2002's Dirty Pretty Things -- elevates 2012.
He alerts the president's chief of staff, Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), who quickly brings Helmsley to the president (Danny Glover, apparently filling in for Morgan Freeman).
The government secretly establishes what Anheuser calls "the most important timetable in the history of mankind" -- a schedule for the most important and most wealthy to be evacuated in confidential arks.
California falls into the ocean and much of the world follows suit.
The director of 2012, Roland Emmerich, has destroyed the world before. His films include The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day and Godzilla.
He seems to enjoy nothing more than seeing the most famous monuments toppled.
The most grounded thing here is the acting. Cusack, Ejiofor, Platt, McCarthy and Harrelson are all better than the materiel, and 2012 is just another doomsday film, with new digital effects and stock scenes patched together from Jaws, The Poseidon Adventure and Armageddon.
And a long one at that. For too much of the 2½-hour 2012, the end is not near.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement