Movie Review: “2012”
By Skip Tucker
http://www.skiptucker.com
Note to all of the literal, scientific-minded naysayers of the movie “2012” who have listed all the reasons why the Mayan predictions for the end of the world are false: buy a tub of popcorn and STFU.
Granted, 2012 is an absurd movie filled with groan-inducing dialogue and plot holes wider than the San Andreas Fault (I actually don’t know how wide that is, come to think about it). But it’s two hours and 38 minutes of absolute, breath-holding action and special effects.
For those of you cosmological purists who scoff at such things, just skip the following: Apparently (according to Woody Harrelson), every 640,000 years, all of the planets line up, which causes the Sun to emit massive amounts of neutrinos then which “mutate” (I know, I groaned at that one, myself) into a sort of super-neutrinos. Those then microwave the core of the planet, causing the Earth’s crust to destabilize. The ancient Mayans foresaw this, and, 158 minutes later, the world ends. Sort of.
John Cusack is the divorced dad charged with the protection of his two kids, his ex-wife and her live-in boyfriend. Whether by limousine, twin-engine Cessna, Winnebago or Russian cargo jet, Cusack manages to barely squeak through and past every collapsing building, crumbling freeway and erupting volcano from Los Angeles to Yellowstone Park to Las Vegas, and finally China (Don’t ask. Just see the movie).
There are a bunch of great actors peppering the film. Danny Glover as the President, Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Serenity”) as the scientist with the heart of gold, and Oliver Platt as the Presidential Science Advisor. Eye-candy includes Amanda Peet as Cusack’s estranged wife and Beatrice Rosen as a Russian billionaire’s mistress (hummina-hummina).
As mentioned earlier, the plot is thinner than a Somalian Weight-Watcher. The acting is, at best, wooden and stilted. And the outcome is as predictable as a chili fart.
I loved it.
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