that was my first post, this is my second. this blog will be dedicated to film (85%), the collected works of jj abrams (5%) and self promotion/deprecation (10%). tell all your friends.

peace.

joe.

REVIEW: 2012

2012

When the eschaton approaches, if it is anything like Roland Emmerich’s latest offering of destruction, 2012, I think I would like to be around to see it happen. Never has an apocalypse been so much fun. For all that is missing from 2012, the sen

se of fun and energy is most definitely alive. Monuments are toppled, cities are crushed, tectonic plates are flipped upside down and what would be millions of people are essentially killed all in a few impressive Emmerich signature shots. After each one, despair, shock, or fear? Of course not, just a dizzy attempt to make comprehension of what’s actually going on or, if you’re in touch with your 13 year old boy, rapid repetition of “sick.....awesome!"

Emmerich ditches the terror that usually comes hand in hand with the end of humanity and instead focuses on two things; a plucky writer, Jackson Curtis, (John Cus

ack) and his family’s attempt to survive and blowing stuff up. Both help to conjure the sense of fun. Indeed, one sequence in which Curtis’ family end up in a car chase between the largest earth quake the San Andreas fault has ever seen, the film feels more like a video game, reminiscent of barmy driving games such as burnout where letterboxes, people and all obstructions imaginable come flying at your screen.

Unfortunately these are not the only similarities, some of the dialogue would still seem hackneyed in Street Fighter 2. It has never been a strongpoint of Emmerich’s, he doesn’t tend to “do” intimate (see Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, Independence Day etc), however some of the characters here, in particular the most caricatured Russian billionaire I may have ever seen, seem less real than the set pieces. The script never does enough to convince us that the fate of the family we are watching is more important than the 5.99 billion others who are perishing.

No one buys a ticket to an Emmerich movie about the end of the world looking for intimate character study, however, and credit must be given to the film for some its jaw-dropping shots. Up on the cinema screen 2012 succeeds in holding your attention due to the sheer magnitude and impressiveness of its destruction of the world. The various earthquakes, eruptions and tsunamis are nothing short of incre

dible. The film bombards you for slightly too long, however, and I feel on another format, on DVD or blu-ray the film does not have enough in its locker to hold your interest for the entire 158 minute running length.

joe