2012

Release Year: 2009

Director: Roland Emmerich

Review: A movie that resembles more an amusement park ride then anything resembling a traditional narrative.  Unfortunately I wanted off the ride, far sooner then I should have.  Roland Emmerich loves to destroy things, and this is very much is his ultimate wheelhouse movie.  He is given the entire earth to blowup, only limited by his imagination.  

The problem is the story is absolutely terrible.  There is only so much full throttle destruction one can take before it just becomes noise.  It's also a lazy movie in that there is nothing new here.  Its taken every disaster movie trope and put it in high gear, but rather then make it more interesting it just made it irritating. The movie was all frosting and no cake.  Nearly everything that happens in the film manages to happen in the exact nano-second before complete disaster.  This is fine once or twice, but the entire movie rides that line.  This does not build suspense, it has the opposite effect.  At no time did I feel any peril for the characters, because the film never builds that up.  

For a movie that depends on stakes, there were none in this film.  I didn't care about the fate of this family.  I did not care about much that was happening, I was too busy groaning with the sheer audacity of Emmerich managing to ruin every moment with a predictably cheesy cliche.  The film manages to have the world destroy itself and make me completely apathetic.  Yes, things blow up, but there needs to be more then that for a movie to be enjoyable and this film just doesn't have it.
Rating: 2/5