Last night's film was the disaster movie 2012, which in turn become a little bit of a disaster in itself.
Roland Emmerich (The day after tomorrow,ID4) again brings the earth to it's knees in another end of the world film. This time the destruction of our planet is on such a massive scale compared to the day after film, this was true end of the world stuff and it was amazing to watch (in a strange way). Land crumbling away into the molten core of the earth, cities gone, yellowstone erupting into a gigantic volcano. These scenes were something else, even if the escape from LA in the limo and plane skated on the wrong side of believable, it was still 20 minutes of pure cinema entertainment. These scenes were fantastic, the CGI was astounding, but even as great as this was the rest of the film, and I mean the narrative wasn't fantastic.
John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chitwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt headed the cast, and it's a great cast, let down by sloppy writing and cliched situations. Not only do we have lots of incidental characters which turn up to say their good-byes to loved ones or try to reoncile their differences that it all becomes unemotional, I didn't really care for these characters, who were they and why are they hanging around this film, I didn't care! As for the main man and I'm not taking about Cusack, what was the point of returning to his plight when he had agreeded to stay behind, he's made his decision we can all assume the outcome, but Emmerich wants us to see him go in the most spectacular way he can make happen. And the film is littered with these pointless excuses to show us disaster moments from around the world, when all I wanted to see was Cusack's story!
Cusack's story did have some good potential, his trip to Yellowstone, the return to LA, the cracks in the road, the comments by the kids all adding up and pushing him to save his family and get to the "ships".I think this would have made a great story, losing around 1 hour of the film would have helped as well. But in the end it became bogged down in morality and a Goverment cover-up! You never had this problem on the Poseidon!
Both 2012 and The Day after Tomorrow use the except same story forumla but I prefered the Day after tomorrow, mainly because I had characters I could care for and I wanted to see survive. Cusack's family would have been the same if we had spent more time with them.
Overall (5/10) and thats for the special effects! The rest was not very good at all!
Now then 2012. I liked this movie, ok it was cheesey but in the same vein as Armageddon and Independence day. The script was the usual round of cliched dialogue and the characters exactly the same as all other disater movies (some just out for personal gain while others are willing to sacrifce themselves at the drop of a hat all for the good of humaity). Having said this I enjoyed it, there were some funny moments and many jaw dropping effects. Some scenes defied belief but that's the type of movie it was (each escape from certain doom more death defying than the last). And at the end humaity prevailed and showed us that even in our darkest hour everyone is willing to make the final sacrifice to save someone else. 6/10
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