2012

Disaster porn junkies, rejoice: Writer-director Roland Emmerich’s end-of-the-world epic 2012 is cause for hooting, hollering and foot-stomping. Delivering off-the-chart special effects and big, steaming mounds of unintentional hilarity, 2012 ranks as a defiantly wackazoid brain drain—armageddon as a 150-minute thrill ride.

Spinning out the end of days prophecies stemming from the Mayan calendar’s stop date at the year 2012, Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser shamelessly and joyously recycle every cliché and excess from the pantheon of so-bad-they’re-brilliant disaster-thons like The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, then regurgitates imagery from countless action movies and, as the cherry on top, piles on tropes from brainless sci-fi action movies of the past 20 years, including Emmerich’s own Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. We freaking love them for it. Boom goes the White House, the Vatican, freeways, the Eiffel Tower, high-rises, Tibetan outposts and more, all rendered with the most gratuitous and opulent CGI money can buy.

Back in the last throes of the star system and old school Hollywood know-how, the cast lists of disaster-amas like this were packed with major movie stars at the top of their game (or else beginning to hit the skids). Since we live in an era woefully absent of icons of the stature of Paul Newman, William Holden and Steve McQueen, it’s John Cusack who gets to brave the crumbling freeways, collapsing buildings and firestorms to somehow sneak himself and his family aboard one of the giant arks built by world leaders to rescue 400,000 of the rich and well-connected. The irony is that Cusack, who has been so smart in off-center movies in the past, could enjoy a major career bump for holding his head high and cashing the paycheck. Considering the eye-rolling dialogue they’re required to put over, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, Danny Glover, Chiwetal Ejiofor and Danny Glover deserve heaps of credit for not cracking up on camera. But it’s Woody Harrelson who deservers a special shout-out; his ripe, rich over-the-topness makes him the movie’s Shelley Winters. Scene for scene, the hugely enjoyable 2012 delivers some of the biggest belly laughs since Showgirls. Cockamamie sequel, please. Buckle up!