2012

The fact that “2012” was made is unusual.  It’s essentially a remake of “Deep Impact” and the director’s own “The Day After Tomorrow.”  These movies are so recent that you might be surprised a studio would revisit such themes again so quickly.

But that’s too logical.  This movie isn’t about “themes” or ideas.  It’s about destroying stuff.  I’m sure everyone could have surmised that from watching the trailer.  The only real goal this movie has to live up to is:  Does it destroy stuff in a cool way?

Well, yes it does.  The effects are stunning.  And it’s not just a few scenes either.  Day After Tomorrow really only had 2 scenes of destruction.  This movie seems to be almost non-stop action scenes.  Most of them are visually amazing, even overwhelming.  You simply cannot see everything happening on screen with only 2 eyes.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m very forgiving on action movies.  I love stuff like this.  And yet…this movie had too much.  It’s very long for a disaster movie (2 hrs, 38 min.) and it feels like it.  And shockingly, it’s the ACTION that there’s too much of.  There are no “bad” action scenes, but some are redundant.  A small example–there are no less than THREE scenes of a plane trying to take off from a crumbling runway.  I actually got annoyed that the movie was repeating ITSELF, not just previous movies anymore.  But since every scene is so well done, it’s very hard to be bored during these.

Stringing the action scenes together are the absolutely cliche assortment of politicians, scientists, and everyday people.  Luckily we get mostly good actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor.  While they cannot make the insanity more believable, they are at least accomplished enough to act as comforting guides through the devastation.

So…the destruction, which is the ultimate goal of this movie, succeeds hugely.  The plot is relatively predictable, the characters are mostly outlines, and the technobabble is plausibly nonsensical.  Which all comes together as a slightly above average action movie.  If you’ve got patience and can overlook the weaker aspects, you’ll have fun with this.