2012 (2009)
Cert: 12a
Running time: 158mins
Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson
Columbia Pictures
Well well well, where to start? 2012 is the latest feature film written and directed by Roland Emmerich who brought us other similar films such as The day after tomorrow. Both films are very similar and in my personal opinion if you’ve seen one you don’t really need to see the other.
Roland seems to have dug out the script of The day after tomorrow and changed it from Ice age to the melting of the Earths core. It seems very lazy and a poor effect from Roland who seems to rely very heavily on his CGI special effects.
2012 is more about the CGI special effects than about the scripting or story of the film (although even the story is very poorly written in the screenplay). To create his dull format of a script come alive he has a cast of John Cusack who plays a overused cliché of a father who after the divorce with wife, struggles to connect with his Children but somehow in the midst of the apocalypse , the family are magically back as one. It’s a worn out cliché which we’ve seen far too many times in disaster films and John Cusack delivers a very dull and bland performance.
Roland Emmerich’s screenplay for the film features yet again all too familiar cliché lines and characters which is laughable at times as the characters dialogue seem dated and cheesy. This I find frustrating as the apocolypse is a perfect way to show characters true emotions and their inner minds but instead Roland persists and delivering the same old overused clichés and cheesy catchphrases which spoil the film.
With the poor script and story of the film , the big budget director Roland Emmerich needs to level this out to show a realistic view of the end of the world as it unfolds. The end of time, the end of the human race.
However It is very painfully unrealistic to watch as the use of CGI is all too apparent and makes it very unconvincing to the viewer. What Emmerich needs to do is balance CGI and actual special effects better which would look a lot more realistic than what looks like a computer game being played.
Hats off, he has got a good team of animators on at hand to create these big action sequences but is ruined by Roland’s poor script, as the end of the world seems to wait up for the main characters by a few seconds, so that every move is a convenient and escape from natural disaster.
This is seen all too clearly in a scene in which Cusack drives frantically to avoid the cracking streets which is always a few feet away from him at all times which looks terrible. It seems as though the cracking of the landscape is just waiting behind the lead roles. This can also be seen in ‘The day after tomorrow’ where the lead characters are running away from ice! And by closing a door, they stop the ice which is ridiculous on so many levels.
Roland Emmerich’s films are now becoming ever so more painful to watch as they become over cliché and poorly scripted. The worst part for me is the way that the end of the world just waits seconds behind the main characters and the overused and dated clichés. The big budgets and use of CGI should be used to better advantage instead of being used on Emmerich’s dated formats for disaster films. It’s hard to tell with it’s the world having the disaster or Roland Emmerich, I would say the latter.