Review of 2012 (2009) by Andrew A — 28 Jun 2014

3/4 stars. I enjoyed this piece of crap. Why? Because it's a Roland Emmerich disaster movie! He never disappoints with good CGI powered action sequences, and this film garners some of his best. The visual effects are undeniably impressive.

Too bad the movie around them sucks. The acting is average, the dialogue is the typical crap churned out in disaster movies these days, and the overall plot is just too ridiculous to make it believable.

Why is that ok? Because Roland Emmerich knows that his movies are ridiculous and therefore never pretends that he's making a good movie. He's just going to have fun. This is such a relief seeing as most modern action movie directors take their movies super seriously.

The movie begins to lose steam near the end because the plot actually settles in. However, before the plot becomes front and center, there is a solid hour and a half of epic disaster sequences. And, unlike a Michael Bay movie, this much action is never too much or too overwhelming, and therefore you enjoy every second of it instead of getting bored.

Another nice little change is that the set pieces change, so you're not watching the same thing over and over again. These incredible action scenes can't overshadow the below average movie underneath.

But Roland Emmerich's self-awareness of his below average movie, combined with the great disaster scenes, has awarded this movie many more repeated watches from me than it deserves.