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Critics Consensus: Roland Emmerich's 2012 provides plenty of visual thrills, but lacks a strong enough script to support its massive scope and inflated length.
Critic Consensus: Roland Emmerich's 2012 provides plenty of visual thrills, but lacks a strong enough script to support its massive scope and inflated length.
All Critics (241) | Top Critics (45) | Fresh (96) | Rotten (145) | DVD (3)
Cusack, with his one-of-the-guys face and his nice way with child actors, does creditable work as an Average American Dad trying to put things right.
2012 is the rare case of a bad film that I'm nevertheless obliged to recommend you see.
2012 is reminiscent of yesteryear '80s shlock-tastic blockbusters -- total popcorn entertainment with ridiculous dialogue and impossible situations and special effects that will boggle the brain for a good two-plus hours.
Even though this movie's running time of two and a half hours is about one hour too long, there's still some pretty cool disaster stuff on the way.
2012 is so long, and its special effects are at once so outrageous and so thunderously predictable, that by the time I lurched from the theatre I felt that three years had actually passed and that the apocalypse was due any second.
[Nothing] will give you more respect for how difficult it is to be an actor than watching top talent like John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet and Oliver Platt struggling to treat the film's ungodly language and situations with perfect seriousness.
2012 is all about this irrational determination to live and perpetuate our crappy civilization. The film concentrates fiercely on who's going to get a spot on the ark in the end.
...seriously, how often do we want to escape into worlds that are hell-bent on ravaging our sense of security with invading aliens and furious natural disasters?
You cannot say, in the terms of the life and career that Emmerich has built for himself, this is not the apex of his work. The world blows up. The world blows up a lot. The world blows up fantastically. There are worst quests in life.
Emmerich favours hoisting his camera high and dry to give audiences the best panoramic view, but it removes all tension from proceedings - you're always at a safe distance.
Two and a half hours of heaving and cleaving and crashing and crunching.
Most of all, I liked the airlifting of giraffes to ark safety via helicopter and the bizarrely unreasonable cheeriness of the beleaguered survivors who all but shout "hip-hip-hooray" after billions of other Earth citizens lose their lives.
I got bored incredibly fast. It has fascinating visual effects. And that is where it stops. There are serious issues of race and class struggle that start to peak up towards the end of the movie, but instead of making the movie interesting by exploring these avenues more, Emmerich returns the focus to the most obnoxious of lead characters.
Super Reviewer
I suppose the general idea behind the film was noble, but why did they have to write such a crappy story for it. It's a given to say that the visual effects are excellent. But a decent plot, if such a think ever existed in disaster flicks, would've been a nice touch.
Visually breathtaking in every shape and form, indeed, but the film's lack of impact and delivery combined with the lengthy duration doesn't capture the audience attention and fear of extinction. Roland Emmerich's 2012 provided a laughable plot and less-than-dramatic storyline to make the entire motion picture to be more disastrous than what the Mayans had predicted. 3.5/5
I loved every second of this over the top completely ridiculous movie. But than again I like end of the world flicks. A movie with a group of good actors and I just enjoyed it. In the end if I am entertained a good review it will get.
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