"2012" A Review

"2012" starring John Cusack, we watched in two nights. It was long. Too long. Much like "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow", it spent the first hour showing us diverse characters who are living different types of lives (scientific, bohemian, middle class, divorced, capitalists and all in between) who by the end, are all mixed up in the end of the world. This just doesn't work plot-wise. Unlike the awesome Lord of the Rings trilogy, or even the Harry Potter movies where you get enough time to build characters you care about, there has to be a magician-like writer who can make you care enough about each character in 2.5 hours to care about how they die. And believe it, most of them die in this one.
This film is big on one thing- destruction of the human race. And how many ways there are to die! Highways splitting apart, ashes, lava flow, floods as tall as the White House (which of course has to die too), car crashes, drowning, etc.
John Cusack does well as the harried, divorced, "writer" type who is the anti-hero hero. He looks like he's smoked pot all day and despite the odds, gets his family to safety by way of stolen cars, stolen helicopters, stolen seats in high priced "arks" that are supposed to save the human and animal races. His son is named "Noah" by the way (get it?)
My favorite character is a super rich man named Uri or something who has bought seats for his two weird twin sons and who takes Cusack's family along until the bitter end for all. Uri doesn't make it, but is the single most funny and interesting character in the film. The writers give him the best lines and we like him until we are supposed to hate him for being rich and perhaps offing his girlfriend because she falls in love with his pilot. The writers need to learn about consistency and also that people watching movies need to have someone to like, someone to hate and someone to love. There are none of those in this movie. It's not done on purpose, but done out of laziness.
Do you remember being a kid, and when you mixed alot of paint colors together you thought you would get a bright, new very cool color, but only got brown?
This is "2012". Too many plots going on. I love complicated stories if they are done on purpose. This was done haphazardly, like 5 different people shared in the writing and just agreed on the ending. How do we end it? With the massive "arks" flying to space to land the humans on the moon to repopulate? Do they become large mechanical islands that the people must survive on for at least a decade until the waters recede? These ideas make more sense than the end to this film.
And don't forget that within about two days, the Earth's plates have shifted, so that Wisconsin is the South pole, no joke.
It's a big move, with lots of big ideas to cover. There is not enough land on Earth to cover the piles of mud this film piles on.
Dig your way through and enjoy the action. Don't worry about plot, people, bad dialogue and a very corny ending. If you follow these instructions, you will be fine.
You survive another day.