2012: The Five Stages of Apocalyptic Grief

Stage 1: Boredom. The exposition was way too long. First, all the science stuff was unnecessary. Nobody cares. Even if they did care, it wouldn't make any difference, because it just sounds ridiculous when the guy from The Guru tells the guy from Dirty Pretty Things (my favorite current actor, Chiwitel Ejiofor) that neutrinos are "mutating".

Second, the movie wastes too much time setting up a long series of coincidences that keep John Cusack 'n' friends alive. To make it to the end of the movie, Cusack must get clues from (1) getting arrested wandering around a dried up lake in Yellowstone, (2) sharing a beer with a wild-eyed mountain man (Woody Harrelson) who's convinced the government is building "spaceships" to escape the inevitable apocalypse, and (3) dropping his boss, a Russian billionaire, off at the airport, where the Russian's kids taunt him and say they're going to live and he's going to die. I realize all this is probably necessary info, but it gets tedious.

Stage 2: Amusement. Los Angeles turns into a crevasse before our eyes as a plane tries to dodge the mayhem. Woody Harrelson yells "bye bye birdies" as the avians evacuate Yellowstone minutes before the eruption of a super-volcano. Another plane tries to dodge more mayhem. Some more shit explodes. Yet another plane barely outruns the mayhem.

However embarassing, this reviewer must admit that he enjoyed all this destruction. It's fun for the same reason that those donut platforms in Super Mario Bros are fun. You know, the ones that start to shake once you land on them, and then fall after you've been on them for a couple seconds? This part of the movie is one big donut platform.

Stage 3: Depression. Now it's not fun anymore. President Danny Glover is covered in ashes, wandering around in the wreckage of Washington D.C., promising to find a little girl's missing father. The scientist calls his dad who's on a doomed cruise ship. George Segal calls his estranged son, only to hear him answer the phone right as destruction rains down upon him. Then tidal waves basically destroy everything that hasn't already fallen into hell or exploded. So everybody's dead, and we don't even have monsters or zombies or anything to fight. It's no longer catastrophe porn -- now it's just despair porn.

Stage 4: Incredulity. Right when it gets extra-depressing, as Cusack and family huddle together in tears, we find out there's going to be a crash landing! Fun again? No, because it's too ridiculous to be fun; rather it's time to watch, mouth agape, at the manufacture of extremely unlikely plot contrivances. The crash landing is successful, only it's not in the ocean, as expected, but in the Himalayas! What luck! Unexpectedly landing their plane feet from the government's secret "ark" project -- especially lucky considering that the earth's crust shifted thousands of miles beneath them while in flight! Then what follows is a parade of stupidity. Helicopters carrying elephants and giraffes. A dog's tightrope act to make it onto the ark at the very last possible second. The dumb effectiveness of the scientist's misplaced righteousness. The hackneyed ticking clock. The realization that the Himalayas are a really bad place to put a big boat if you expect it to be knocked around by a tidal wave.

Let's get this thing over with.

Stage 5: Disappointment. Because by the end, I wanted everyone to die. Spoiler alert: while most of humanity doesn't survive, most of the characters we've been following make it -- they shouldn't have, though, because they make all sorts of bad decisions at the end of the movie that should justly spell their demise ("hey, the tidal wave's coming in ten minutes, so open the doors! We can't let all these billionaires die because we've got big rooms." Idiots.) Plus, three out of the four main characters that do die are the only sympathetic ones, and the fourth deserves to die but instead dies doing something selfless and redeeming. I call bullshit.

Note: I didn't want to see this, nor did I have to pay for it. I saw it as a favor to a friend.