Tourists look at historic landmarks and find their hearts aflutter at their natural beauty.
Director Roland Emmerich goes on vacation and sees things he wants to blow up real good.
“2012,” Emmerich’s latest disaster epic, piggybacks on the belief a few cling to that the Mayan calendar says we’ve only got three years left on the planet.
We’ve certainly been here before. Emmerich’s films, like “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” thrive on destroying property and thrusting heroes into improbable scenarios.
That’s a kind way of saying, “dopey.”
His junk formula works here – for a while. But given an endless array of special effects and a story that’s at least a half hour too long prove cataclysmic to his vision.
John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor split the crucial duties of grounding Emmerich’s ViewMaster of doom.
The alignment of critical planets, which happens once every 64,000 years, causes sun flares which makes the earth’s crust unstable and aligns nicely with the Mayan myth of the end of the world.
Cusack plays Jackson, a failing novelist trying to spend quality time with his kids. He ends up ducking fireballs and shards of concrete when the earth’s crust starts to shake, rattle and roll. And Ejiofor is the wise scientist who predicts the earth is about to implode but can’t do anything about it.
Disaster films demand colorful ensemble casts, and “2012″ fulfills that film prophecy by rounding up Woody Harrelson, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet and director Tom McCarthy (“The Visitor”).
Emmerich’s storytelling gift is to reduce the deaths of thousands, or even millions and try to make us focus on a particular person in peril, or a family, or even a cutesy dog.
He doesn’t write characters. He raids Central Casting, a recycling effort which goes to great lengths here.
“2012″ doesn’t have an ecological or spiritual dog in this fight. It’s a straight on disaster film, and we’re asked to root for Cusack and company while millions of less fortunate folks perish around them.
Emmerich keeps the tempo up, but when we’ve seen the umpteenth roadway crack and splinter, or yet another building come crashing down to earth, the thrill is more or less gone.
Ejiofor still remains one role away from becoming a major star – suffice to say this isn’t it. But his presence allows Emmerich to employ his immature storytelling tics without restraint.
If Oscars were handed out to actors who keep their dignity in such fare, Ejiofor and Cusack would be in a death battle for the golden statuette.
“2012″ is perfectly mindless summer entertainment reaching movie theaters roughly four months too late. But as the Oscar bait films start to appear at area movie houses, slick escapism like “2012″ offers might seem a smart choice for many.
(Photo: John Cusack tries to save himself – and his family – when the earth starts to implode in “2012.”/Sony Pictures)
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
“Ejiofor still remains one role away from becoming a major star”
If his awesome performance in Serenity didn’t do it, then it’s probably never going to happen.
I hate to say it, but if he had changed his stage name to something like Charlie Emerson, he’d probably be a star by now. After all, there’s a reason why Tom Cruise decided early on in his career that he wasn’t going to be publicly known as Thomas Mapother III.
Good point …I was gonna mention his work in 2012 on one of the radio quick hits I do each week but was unsure how to pronounce his name. I looked it up, but ultimately the segment didn’t allow me to expand on his work. Plus, Iwould have had to describe who he was and which roles he previously played.
Still, he’s a terrific actor and deserving of wider fame.
It’s not even a prophesy, it is the year that a (now obsolete) Mayan calendar ends. Apparently, all the Mayans expected to happen when they got to the end was that they’d start counting again from the beginning.
There is major doom and gloom associated with the date in some (very tiny) circles, but I’ll amend this to make that more clear. Thanks for the heads up!