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Filmmaker Roland Emmerich loves to destroy the world with tons of special effects. He did it with such previous doomsday movies as "The Day After Tomorrow," "Godzilla," and "Independence Day." Now he's back at it again with something called "2012." NY1's Neil Rosen filed the following review.So according to ancient Mayan law, the world's going to end in three years and it's going out with a bang. The earth's tectonic plates will abruptly shift because of a rare alignment of the planets combined with solar flares. This will cause massive tidal waves and giant earthquakes and everyone's gonna die.
So, writer, director Emmerich pulls out all the CGI stops here and literally blows up the world. California is the first to go as it crumbles and falls into the sea.
As throngs of people pray with the Pope for salvation, the Vatican crumbles.
As we witness other cities, as well as warships out at sea meet their fate, John Cusak, who plays a novelist here, tries to save his ex wife and their two kids.
It seems that the world's leaders have known about this end of days scenario for a while now. But they've left the world's population in the dark. Preparing for the inevitable, they've built several modern day Noah's Arks and have hidden them in China. A select group of people and many different types of animals will board and with any luck, the human race and several other species can survive.
That's about it for the plot. But this movie isn't really about nuanced story. In fact, the script is ridiculous, as the cliched structure of the film borrows from numerous 1970's disaster films, most notable "Earthquake." But you won't really care about that. This is all about spectacle and Emmerich wants to visually wow you. For a while he succeeds.
Despite being filled with one dimensional characters who spew dopey dialogue and who have one too many improbable, last minute escapes, at 158 minutes, "2012" is a lot of fun for the first hour and half. It's a state-of-the-art CGI, way over the top, theme park ride and you will marvel, for a while, witnessing famous landmarks and cities topple.
It's the last hour, when the world, as we know it is already gone and the action shifts to the escape ships, where this film wears out its welcome. We've already seen the big effects stuff and what's left is anticlimactic. The film starts to resemble a bad version of "Titanic."
Overall, it's an enjoyable, though moronic, guilty pleasure, up to a point, before it falls apart.
Neil Rosen's Big Apple Rating: 2.5 Apples