“Why can’t they just pull the plane up?!?!” A very good question posed by my friend BK (Brandon Kloer) and such a good question that I asked him to go ahead and write the review for the film 2012. The film debuted this past weekend in the year 2009 for fear that the year 2012 might come into play later on and you would not be able to see said film. Honestly if this whole debacle actually happens in the year 2012 then I’ll eat my shorts. Anyways, just trying to keep things interesting. I apologize for the lack of reviews as of late – I’ve just not had time. So without further ado, here is Brandon Kloer’s review of 2012 – thanks BK!

Sum It Up:

The movie 2012 is the story of the end of the world in the year 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar.  Our main character Jackson Curtis, played by John Cusack, is a divorced father of two children and a little known author.  His entire purpose in this film is to save his estranged family from the inevitable destruction of the planet before it is too late, all the while trying to regain the love and trust of his family.  There are more themes to the plot including what makes us civilized and how people lose their humanity in desperate situations which help to round out the story.

the Good:

Needless to say about this film but the first thing that really stands out even just watching the trailer is the special effects throughout the movie.  All the disaster effects look amazing and are so well done that I found them to be believable.  Not once during the film did I feel like I was pulled out of the story by a bad special effect.  My favorite special effect in this movie was the super volcano.  The eruption of the volcano and the subsequent fallout looked impressive and wasn’t quite like anything I’ve seen in a film before.

Another strong feature of this movie was the acting.  I’d have to agree with Lucas that it’s hard to go wrong with John Cusack.  He delivered where it mattered and had some pretty strong scenes while still being able to present some comic relief.  Amanda Peet also did a decent job of portraying Jackson Curtis’ wife in the film and the actors who played their children were decent.  However, I feel my favorite performance in the film was delivered by Woody Harrelson (sorry to shortchange Cusack Lucas).  His character was so out there that his performance just stuck with me after the film was over.  I just wish that he had been in the movie more because he was pretty entertaining.

I was also a fan of the overall plot of the movie.  I’m always a sucker for a good disaster/apocalypse movie because there are so many interesting things that directors and writers can do.  They came up with a pretty interesting way for the world to end and set the canvas for the amazing scenes that occurred.  I found myself really curious how anyone was supposed to survive the end of the world right up to the end of the film.

the Bad:

I’d like to say that the biggest con of this movie was the first half an hour or so but that’d be unfair for me to say because I slept through that part.  The movie just started way too slowly.  I came into the theatre excited and prepared to see amazing destruction and awesome special effects but I felt I was waiting too long for anything very interesting to get started.  I understand that they want to get the characters established and some back story to the film before everything turns to chaos but I just found myself uninterested in the first half hour of the movie.  I felt I began to care about the characters more as they banded together and grew closer to survive the apocalypse.

One of my other complaints was that a lot of the really cool action scenes felt reused to me.  There are literally three scenes in this movie where the main characters are taking off in an airplane at the last second where almost the exact same thing happens.  I just wish that at least one takeoff had gone differently because it seemed like I kept re-watching the same scene over and over.  And while I’m on this topic, and I know I’ve said this before Lucas so you knew it was coming, why during the first takeoff was that dumbass flying underground forever?!  If you’ve seen the trailer you know what I’m talking about, but during the movie I just wanted to yell at that asshole to pull up.

My only other real complaint about this film is that while some of the acting was really good some of it left me feeling less than impressed.  Danny Glover as the president for instance was just terrible but the last film I saw him in that I enjoyed was Lethal Weapon but Mel Gibson wasn’t here to back his ass up this time.  Also I found almost all of the Russian characters to be over the top.  At times I enjoyed the character Yuri and found him interesting but at other times his strange performance pulled me out of the film.

Final Thought:

All in all I feel that 2012 was a good movie.  It’s one of those movies that you go to see knowing that you’re going to have to suspend your disbelief but that you’re going to be entertained.  And I was very entertained by this movie and you can’t ask for much more than that.  Could I have waited until it came out on DVD to see this movie?  Probably, but I enjoyed my movie experience.

Rating: 7.5/10

(phoenixwave’s review score = 5/10)