The World of Tomorrow

Alright, since it seems that I have an audience now... Which is just plain weird, I'm gonna try to get to a review a week again. So here's the deal, movies don't come into my store on Tuesday anymore, we now get the prestreets on Thursday or Friday. What this means I have only 3-4 days to watch all my prestreet rentals over the weekend, even less time if I actually work. I'm going to try and get new movies up, but I'm gonna be taking requests and suggestions as well. So shoot me a request or suggestion at TheScarletRogue@GMail.com Subject Line: MovieGeek Request.

2012

In 2012 the Mayans predicted the end of the world, and they were right. In the year 2012 the planetary alignment causes a blast of Neutrino waves from the sun that melts the earths core, causing the planet to slowly crumble. Jackson Curtis (Cusack) is on a camping trip with his kids when the world starts to end, now he and his family search desperately for a way to escape the madness while the world literally falls apart around them.

Disaster Movies, let me say just one thing about Disaster Movies. They should be awe inspiring. This isn't something subtle here, theres no subtext, or silent menace in the shadow... You are destroying something. A city, a ship, the entire world, something is going to be utterly annihilated and the audience needs to feel it. Say what you will about movies like Volcano, Independence Day, or Armageddon(And honestly, I could say a lot.) But they knew how to make the destruction, the disasters of their movies feel disastrous.

2012 is almost comical in that regard. The destruction is so outrageous and the action is so ridiculous that you'll be hurdled out of the experience. It simply feels as though the makers of the movie are trying to make you laugh at the utter destruction of California as a whole. Donuts roll in the path of the protagonists, slow driving old ladies block their path as the road crumbles behind them, and a subway train shoots out of the ground as the heroes take off in a plane. There is nothing to the action except for barely missed it scenes, where inevitably the protagonists will just barely skirt by as something attempts to crush, drop, or explode around them. Many of these moments happen within SECONDS of each other, it's simply too much.

And this is John Cusack, do you know how much you have to work for me to dislike a John Cusack film? He and the cast are really the only saving grace in this film. Sure they're all just stock, nothing more than placeholders between the over the top action and destruction scenes, vessels for us to sit with and take us from explosion to explosion... But with actors like John Cusack, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson, and Oliver Platt, at least some emotion is drawn from these rather bland characters.

Though even with the horrible things I've just said, it's not as horrible as I expected. I was expecting from word of mouth something truly bad, and got something merely poor. It's not a good movie, that's for sure. And while it fails, even in regards to it's own genre, you won't be gnawing your own foot off to escape it if you pick it up. It's certainly not a purchase, though, only a rental.

And I just got through the entire review without ranting why the theories behind 2012 are wrong. I'm quite proud of myself.