2012-movie-poster

I’ve always felt like I should like Roland Emmerich’s films more than I actu­ally do, mainly because I love the dis­as­ter movie genre.  The Poseidon Adventure is one of my all-time favorite films, the gold stan­dard of this style, and Emmerich has been plow­ing forth in that direc­tion ever since Independence Day hit the mul­ti­plexes.  If any main­stream film­maker seemed to be the spir­i­tual child of Irwin Allen, it was Emmerich.

That said, his films have always left me cold.  ID4 seemed fun at the time but its appeal dis­in­te­grated once given a sec­ond thought.  The Patriot didn’t inter­est me, Godzilla and 10,000 BC were embar­rass­ing duds and I didn’t even bother with The Day After Tomorrow.  In fair­ness to Emmerich, only two Allen dis­as­ter epics really got it right (the afore­men­tioned Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno) but at least his lesser efforts had an old-Hollywood charm to fall back on.  Emmerich had CGI and big­ger bud­gets but nei­ther could cap­ture Allen’s ballyhoo.

Thus, I was totally sur­prised by how 2012 won me over.  The plot is straight­for­ward disaster-flick fod­der: sci­en­tists dis­cover the earth’s core is over­heat­ing, which will trig­ger a chain of tidal waves, earth­quakes and vol­canos that will wipe the earth’s sur­face clean.  A series of poten­tial sur­vivors are intro­duced, men­aced and occa­sion­ally picked off as they attempt to make their way to a string of “ark”-style super­ships built by uber­mil­lion­aires and gov­ern­ment offi­cials to weather the catastrophes.

2012 works as charm­ingly daft, old-school Hollywood pulp because it gets the blend of destruc­tion, pathos and pulp hero­ics just right, cre­at­ing a series of ever-bigger cliffhang­ers that deliver the destruc­tive goods with clock­work effi­ciency.  Sure, the char­ac­ters are all stock types and the last-minute escapes rely on ridicu­lous amounts of con­trivance but that’s part of the fun: 2012 never tries to be any­thing but a b-movie with an a-movie bud­get.  Emmerich paces it well and punc­tu­ates it with action and cheer­ful good humor. Most impor­tantly, he embraces the story’s inher­ent ridicu­lous­ness in a straight-faced way that gives the film a bizarre yet charm­ing hon­esty in its pur­suit of implau­si­ble fun.

Just as impor­tant is the film’s well-chosen cast.  The studio-era stars that dot­ted Allen’s pro­duc­tions are long gone but Emmerich and com­pany have cho­sen a good cross-section of char­ac­ter actors, up-and-comers and name-brand types.  John Cusack car­ries a lot of the weight as an ex-novelist who is forced to find his inner hero to save his ex and their kids.  No mat­ter how silly the plot points get, he plays it straight and anchors the pro­ceed­ings.  Chiwitel Ejiofor shows off his tal­ent by breath­ing life into the “earnest sci­en­tist” cliché, even man­ag­ing to pull off a cli­mac­tic “what makes us human” speech that could trip up a less care­ful actor.  Also wor­thy of note are Oliver Platt, chew­ing scenery in a flashy yet con­trolled way as a Machiavellian gov­ern­ment type, and Woody Harrelson, who camps it up in an endear­ing man­ner as a conspiracy-theorist talk radio guy.

The end result is irre­deemably silly and con­trived… but it’s also so earnest and good-natured in its pur­suit of logic-be-damned spec­ta­cle that its flaws become charms if approached in the proper, fun-loving frame of mind.  Thus, 2012 is the most con­sis­tent and suc­cess­ful ven­ture thus far for Emmerich.  He’ll have a hell of a time try­ing to top it but I hope he tries.  Irwin Allen would have wanted it that way.