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| Tookey's Review |
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| Mixed Reviews |
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| Trailer |
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| Cast |
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| Released: |
2009 |
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| Genre: |
ACTION
DISASTER
ADVENTURE
SCIENCE FICTION
EPIC
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
158 |
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The biggest disaster movie ever.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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2012 is Roland Emmerich’s vision of the Apocalypse, which means it’s full of spectacular disasters.
Los Angeles slides into the Pacific (pictured). St Peter’s in Rome collapses on top of praying thousands. A tidal wave makes an enormous aircraft carrier crush the White House. John and Edward survive all the way through to making the Christmas number one. Okay, I made that last bit up.
Even for a Roland Emmerich film, it’s laughably crass, with the destruction of 99% of the human race given less screen-time and human concern than the saving of someone’s pet dog.
But the spectacular CGI effects are a guilty pleasure, and this is cinema’s ultimate tribute to the joy of blowing stuff up.
Emmerich’s last disaster film The Day after Tomorrow was an attempt to show his caring, environmental side, and 2012 is perhaps best appreciated as an epic piece of recycling.
He’s reused the storyline of Spielberg’s The War of the Worlds that was about a divorced dad re-earning the love of his ex-wife and children, with John Cusack standing in for Tom Cruise.
Also, he’s borrowed the Jeff Goldblum sub-plot from his own hit Independence Day, with Chiwetel Ejiofor as the principled scientist battling the corrupt political establishment, impersonated here by Oliver Platt.
It’s rubbish, of course. You shouldn’t attend this kind of movie expecting King Lear. Nor should you expect light and shade. Roland Emmerich doesn’t do comic relief. Well, not intentionally, anyway.
However, if you want massive spectacle, an orgy of disaster-movie cliches and schadenfreude run riot, you won’t be disappointed. Cinematic popcorn doesn’t come poppier, cornier or cheesier than this.
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