The end of the world has rarely been this much fun: “2012” is a disaster movie that can only be described as exuberant.
Not familiar with the hoodoo implied by the title? As various tea-leaf-readers and mystics have determined, the world will end on the winter solstice in 2012 because that’s when the Mayan calendar runs out, or words to that effect. Book your reservations now.
The mayhem-minded director Roland Emmerich has taken this as an excuse for his largest exercise in mass destruction. And for the man who made “Independence Day” (a delirious homage to 1950s alien-invasion flicks) and “The Day After Tomorrow,” that’s saying something.
The latter film went wrong because Emmerich got all serious on us and tried to make an environmental statement in the midst of wiping out buildings with glaciers.
He has no such impediment in “2012,” and the resulting film is an all-stops-out, Saturday-afternoon, popcorn-munching hoot.
As in any disaster movie, we follow a few different folks as they try to stay alive. Scientist Chiwetel Ejiofor (late of “Redbelt”) has informed the U.S. president (Danny Glover) and a top adviser (Oliver Platt) that, you know, the end is near. A secret evacuation program is in process.
Meanwhile, a failed author (John Cusack) is borrowing the kids from his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) for a trip to Yellowstone; sadly, this is the weekend the hot springs become Ground Zero for a continental-plate-shifting volcanic explosion.
These aren’t spoilers, folks. We know Armageddon is coming in the first five minutes and (understandably) the TV commercials have included all the best total-destruction moments.
But even that won’t prepare you for Emmerich’s dizzying funhouse ride, which drops most of the California coast into the ocean, tosses an aircraft carrier at the White House and — well, we won’t tell you what happens in the Himalayas, because that’s toward the end.
Emmerich (writing with Harald Kloser, who also composed the music) still can’t come up with believable dialogue, but at least he’s got a strong cast on board. Cusack and Ejiofor are excellent company, Thandie Newton is around as the president’s daughter and Woody Harrelson tears it up as a radio conspiracy-theorist who happens to be right about all this.
It’s important to distinguish between this kind of high cheese and the dreck of a movie like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”
“2012” is ridiculous, but it is visually coherent, uses durable stock characters, and pays off its action sequences with a certain logic.
This is B-movie filmmaking on a lavish, mad scale. If you’re in the mood for the apocalypse, your needs will be satisfied.
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