2012 (2009) Spoilers Galore! |

I can think of about 2,012 reasons why you shouldn’t watch 2012, but I will spare you the full list for right now. The whole “end of the world will happen in 2012” mostly came about because the Mayan Long Count calendar ends in December of 2012. So is this going to be another Y2K scare or will the Earth really end? Who cares, but in the movie 2012, the earth really gets effed up and a metric butt-ton of people die.

SPOILERS START HERE, AND I’M TALKING ABOUT MEGA SPOILERS

You start off in 2012 getting to know the different sets of people of whose survival stories you will be following until they croak or make it to the arks the government is building in order to survive the end of the world. See, because of the sun’s quasars or neutrinos or estrogen or something the world suffers from huge earthquakes that cause the coast lands to sink into the water. Then the earthquakes cause enormous tsunami’s that cover all land mass. Obviously, you need a boat to survive. Tickets to the arks were only offered to the best, richest, and most powerful political figures in the world. All of us lowly people just get screwed. I would like to point out that most of the people given opportunities to buy tickets were NOT in their prime “making babies” era. So, if you are trying to pick the best people in the world to survive and repopulate the earth, then why are you fillin’ up your boats with blue-blooded old fatties? I’m just sayin’.

Here’s a rundown of who survives and who dies: You’ve got the President of the U.S., Danny “I’m getting too old for this sh**” Glover, and his daughter, Thandie “I’m getting too hot for this crap” Newton. President Glover bites the bullet in a huge tsunami while his daughter makes it safely onto one of the arks. There’s the scientists who was responsible for alerting the government the world was going to end, Chiwetel Ejiofor (who many of you probably better know as bad-ass villain extraordinaire The Operative from Serenity) who makes it onto the arks. John Cusack plays Amanda Peet’s ex-husband, a lovable loser writer who seems to be on the edge of a breakdown. They have two kids and then there’s a 5^th guy: Amanda Peet’s boyfriend, a booby doctor (Thomas McCarthy). We’ll just refer to him as Dr. Bodybag, because the first second he walks on screen you know he’s friggin’ doomed. And, lo and behold, he totally falls between two boat gears and gets crushed while the all of the other family members survive. Then there’s another family, this time from Mother Russia. The father, Zlatko Buric, dies at the end saving his two children. His girlfriend, Beatrice Rosen, drowns in a sealed off chamber slowly flooding with water. If anyone else pops up that I haven’t mentioned and they’re not Asian, just know that they are pretty much boned.

END OF SPOILERS

Here’s the rundown. 2012 had some fun, ridiculous parts. I was bored for the first 35 minutes and entertained for the following hour, maybe. But it doesn’t end there. It keeps going for 2 hours and 40 minutes. So if you need help accepting the idea that the world might end in 2012, just watch the movie and you will be ready and wishing it would just get destroyed already. 2012 did have phenomenal visual effects. It was real purtty, but after a while, I just got bored looking at yet another tsunami. It was also very melodramatic. You had to sit through each character saying goodbye/being too late to say goodbye to their families. Over and over and over. Blech. I am the Action Flick Chick, I wanted to see it cut the cheese and get to part where they decimate the Earth.

If you’re curious about the flick, then at least rent it. It has some neat visual effects and you have the power of fast forward. This movie is for you if you love disaster movies, cheesy stuff, or melodramatic movies, although you’d probably have more fun just skipping it and Independence Day again.

Time Until the End of the World Happens: ~ 34 minutes

Baddies: THE SUN!!

Best Line: “Wherever we’re all together, that’s home, right?” LAAMMMMMEEEEE! You and Dr. Phil can hug that feel-good crap out of your system SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Best Kill: After people have learned that the world is ending, they go crazy. Pure chaos breaks out all over the world and it shows a few news clips of all that is happening. One new clip shows a whole posse of men on their horses riding through the streets of a city. One poor sucker doesn’t get out of the way in time and gets owned by one horse and then trampled by the rest. WOW! But what really puts the cherry on top is that it looked like it was real footage, not just made for the movie. Now I can’t confirm that it was real footage or not, but that dude died…hard!

Best Explosion: Yellowstone National Park erupts like a massive, massive volcano. You get blinded by the explosion and then there is a ginormous waterfall of lava. To top it all off, it starts raining fireballs all over the place from the eruption. It will be hard to find an explosion bigger than this one. Bravo!

Action Rating: 3 Equally Ridiculous Disaster Movie Ideas, out of 5.