2012 ☆☆☆

I admit my initial surmises were wrong, "2012" is a much better film than I thought it was going to be. It's a highly enjoyable blockbuster crowd-pleaser that's well written and nicely expanded (with my first thoughts given the movie is over two-and-a-half hours I feared it would be too long to bare) with scope and characters given more width and breath than any other visual effects film would allow (TRANSFORMERS!!) and played be a good ensemble cast, and Roland "Disaster Movie!" Emmerich has made his best executed and most exceptional quality effects film since "Independence Day."

He did say he would never make another disaster film. Lets be happy that this is what he does best.

If anyone was planning on not seeing "2012" because of the negativity surrounding it, you should forgot those and see it anyway. For the price of a theater ticket (mine for an evening showing was $11), "2012" is well worth it, and, besides, you can't beat seeing huge visual effects doomsday on the big screen! (Why, I wonder idly, was the movie not filmed in IMAX?)

Another thing surprising me about "2012" is how much more emotionally involving it is than, say, "A Christmas Carol," another big budget effects movie released only last week (I have seen it, but my insuperable laziness and writer's block has stopped me from writing a review as of yet), a movie meant to pluck your heart strings and enlighten your soul, but fails by being unintentionally cold. "2012," more weirdly, puts hope and warmth in you, and this is because the film is put together with practiced skill and, I was so sure, if anything, the movie would fail on this regard, a well written story. Emmerich has made movies like this before, big effects shows with a large scale plot and smaller intermittent, connecting sub-plots, and lots of key characters; most of the time they have come out well done and tremendously exciting: "Independence Day" and the mostly overlooked "Godzilla" remake being his best ones. In his lesser works: "The Patriot," yes I didn't like it, " the recently bad "10,000 BC" and "The Day After Tomorrow." Speaking of the latter, "2012" is what that film should have been. I thank Columbia and the producers for giving the budget and space to make "2012" the big disaster film of it's length, because, given "After Tomorrow" is only two hours long, and also having a bad script and a smaller budget, that film was just too constrained to give Emmerich any room to spread his skills. "2012" was the chance he hasn't been given that often, and he has proven it again.

Lets thank the producers for giving Emmerich two more things: a doomsday concept just waiting to be made into a disaster movie, the mayan prediction of the end of days on 12/21/2012 (I just noticed now that date has all the same numbers.....nevermind, just lots more gruel for theology nuts to feed off of), and given that wonderful banking concept, a big budget to create all those glorious visual effects sequences. The destruction scenes are Emmerich at his best, and two of my favorites, the escape from LA and the escape from Yellowstone, are so beautifully animated and directed by Emmerich the scenes are not only a visual wonder, but are, as intended, thrilling and frightening to watch. Well, not so frightening. The one thing about the writing, especially for those scenes, was the constant gags and light banter between the characters as the world was collapsing around them. It seeped the suspense and terror of those scenes immensely, and might have improved the emotional impact of the movie, but I suspect anyway those were put in so as to not make them as scary, as visual realistic as they are, because as close as we are to the year 2012 it might shock enough people to strengthen the already mass hysteria. Amateur panics.

I hope Roland Emmerich will continue to do more movies like this just because he's so damned good at it, so lets look forward to another, maybe even better movie than "2012." In the mean time, catch this while you can in theaters, for the high ticket price you might be glad you didn't spend it on anything else (sorry, couldn't come up with anything reasonably wasteful just now).