Now on DVD: 2012

I was first introduced to disaster films when I was in college and immediately fell in love! From Danger: Volcano in New York to Dragon Wars to The Day After Tomorrow, I was hooked on apocalyptic movies for good. When I first saw a trailer for 2012, I was honestly scared. I had heard about the Mayan calendar and knew that some people believed that the world will end in two years but I just thought that it was a revival of the Y2K nuts and by 2013 we would have a Family Guy episode mocking the event just like we did in 2001. However, the trailer for the movie actually frightened me and I refused to see it for fear I would have some sort of attack in the theater. When it came out on DVD a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't help myself. The disaster lover in me needed to watch John Cusack get washed away by a giant tidal wave that pushed an air craft carrier onto the White House lawn. After the movie was over, the credits rolled and I had realized that I had fallen asleep twice, I thought that 2012 was even worse than Komodo vs. Cobra and not nearly as compelling.

2012 follows the same formula as most disaster movies, dead beat divorced dad realizes that the world is going to end and wants to save his children and ex-wife who are more shocked that he has come back into their lives than they are by the extinction of the human race in less than 2 hours (movie time). Cusack plays a writer who has written a book about the apocalypse that no one has read and those who did hated it...oh, won't they be mad when it all comes true and they only read the SparkNotes version! The first disaster occurs when Los Angeles is ripped apart by an earthquake and falls into the ocean and the nation is shocked (hasn't the discovery channel been telling us that for decades?). Cusack, kids, and ex-wifey all escape and try to outrun the apocalypse by flying to Las Vegas (because of course Las Vegas will survive the apocalypse...it's like a cockroach) and eventually China where the government is housing giant "arks" that will only hold a certain amount of people but can assure that those people will survive the disaster. Of course they meet all kinds of international people on their journeys all of whom are walking stereotypes.

The movie runs over two hours for an event that could be summarized in one sentence: only science fiction authors and wealthy Americans can defeat big waves. The most irritating aspect of the film is that the acting wasn't good but it wasn't terrible therefore it was difficult to make fun of! It was also disturbing that everyone's favorite characters die and dumb daddy dead beat lives with the promise to his children of being a better father. Personally, I was not invested in the daddy-kiddie relationship and therefore did not care about his future role model status.

Some of the graphics were cool but not scary. Yet even this did not sustain my attention for though I didn't miss a second of The Gathering, I fell asleep twice during 2012 and knew that I hadn't missed anything. So I guess the moral for the future is that when 2012 actually comes, I'll probably sleep right through that as well!

-DLP