2012

2012 is not a disaster. That's one thing critics, for the most part, agree on -- to various degrees. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times even goes so far as to call it "the mother of all disaster movies" -- largely because the movie doesn't merely show a few recognizable landmarks being destroyed -- but the entire Earth. "You think you've seen end-of-the-world movies?" he remarks. "This one ends the world, stomps on it, grinds it up and spits it out." His conclusion: "The movie gives you your money's worth. Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it one of the year's best? No. Does Emmerich hammer it together with his elbows from parts obtained from the Used Disaster Movie Store? Yes. But is it about as good as a movie in this genre can be? Yes." Many reviewers note that it's a useless enterprise to try to critique the screenplay -- which is based on the premise that ancient Mayans forecast the end of the world on December 21, 2012 -- the final day of their calendar. (They apparently did not forecast the end of their own civilization, which occurred hundreds of years earlier.) That hasn't stopped others from zeroing in on the plot. Like Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, who comments, "Despite the frenetic action scenes, the movie sags, done in by multiple story lines that undercut one another," she writes. Claudia Puig in USA Today sums up: "The movie is an undeniable visual spectacle, but just as unequivocally a cheesy, ridiculous story." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post won't even grant that it's cheesy, calling it instead "pure Velveeta," -- but, ah, the spectacle. "About the only thing that's missing from 2012 (except sanity)," he writes, "is 3-D, IMAX and Sensurround. For those, I would gladly pay $20 a ticket." Noting that the movie reportedly cost $260 million to make, Elizabeth Weitzman writes in the New York Daily News: "All that money can buy some jaw-dropping special effects, but not, it seems, a script worth a dime." Still, Tom Maurstad in the Dallas Morning News thinks it was probably a good idea to present a threadbare story. "If the viewer were ever invited to think or feel about what's happening on-screen, the movie's wow-whoa-ain't-it-cool momentum would collapse in a heap of horrific preposterousness," he writes. And Mick Lasalle in the San Francisco Chronicle gives it a rave review, although admitting, "It's hard to do justice to his ridiculous, wonderful movie." Lasalle makes the point: "People talk about 'formula' almost always as a pejorative, but formulas get to be formulas because they work, and there's something to be said for a formula picture done almost to perfection." On the other hand, Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal hasn't a kind word to say about either the story or the effects, tagging the movie, "destructo drek." »