I don't think there has ever been a man to embrace cliché quite like Roland Emmerich. In a day and age where audiences seem to be craving a more modern, thoughtful and somewhat cerebral action film (to an extent), Emmerich still insists on sticking unashamedly to the well worn rulebook set down by Irwin Allen with the likes of The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. So cue people shouting “you’re not gonna make it!” when they clearly ARE gonna make it, our failed author/father protagonist turning hero at precisely the right moment (including a moment where everyone thinks he’s dead when, shock horror, he isn’t) and cue the obligatory dog saving scene that is given way too much screen time considering the many millions of human lives that have been lost up to this point.
But to bitch about such contrivances would be missing the point entirely. On the outset, yes, it’s laughably bad and the mid-carnage down time can be horribly slow at times (it’s a whopping 2 hours and 40 minutes long) yet every penny of its $200 million + budget is there on screen and not only does it deliver some of the biggest scenes of destruction I think I’ve ever witnessed, I really felt that, amongst the cliché, it really managed to convey a genuine sense of impending doom.
Emmerich also manages to cast his movies well, in this case populating the carnage with accomplished character actors. In lesser hand Jackson Curtis would be a typically damp squid (how many times have we seen the down and out divorcee who’s out of touch with his kids?) yet somehow John Cusack makes it work with his air of natural charisma. Who knew?
No one does disaster quite like Emmerich. 2012 is a big, brash and completely retarded throw back to the classic disaster films of the 70’s. I had a ball.
4/5
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