Tagline: We were warned...
Curiosity: Roland Emmerich destroys the world… again! Plus, it’s got John Cusack, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson.
Plot: Circa 2009 (that’s like now!), Dr. Satnam Tsurutani (Jimi Mistry) discovers that the Earth’s core is gonna melt like buttah. He shows his findings to Dr. Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor), his best, best, most bestest friend in the world, the one guy who so totally would not let him drown in a tsunami (foreshadowing!). Adrian just so happens to work for the U.S. government, so he jets back to Washington, D.C. with the most compelling five-page report ever written. Better than your book report on The Phantom Tollbooth, and that wordplay shit was like three grades above your reading level. So when government stooge Carl Anheuser (Oliver Pratt) takes a look, clearly the only appropriate response is to say “My God,” and then quickly exit the room… for action! Carl meets up with the president (Danny Glover) and they set up a plan to save
Meanwhile, Jackson Curtis (Cusack) is a terrible father trying to prevent his kids from forgetting him in favor of their new dad, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy), who is both a doctor and an airplane pilot. Also, some minorities and/or old people do some stuff.
Thoughts: Emmerich took an awesomely bad concept and mucked it up. 2012 should have been one of my favorite films of the year, instead all I walked away with was images of every well-known catastrophe from the last decade. It’s kind of hard not to think of 9/11 or the Asian Tsunami from 2004 when you’re watching hundreds of computer-generated people fall out of buildings or get swept up in massive tidal waves. Hell, the entire state of
At the same time, the movie is incredibly ridiculous (It’s still an Emmerich film, after all). There are plenty of chase scenes, by which I mean Cusack and his brood run away from nature. It’s hard to take Glover seriously when he’s lisping through the end of the world. “My fellow Americanth, the thun hath melted the Earttthhhh core, tho now the crutht is shhhifting.” He’s like Sylvester the Cat. Thandie Newtown plays his daughter, and that gal cannot control her face. She always looks like she’s pooping. Always and forever.
But there are moments that shine. Ejiofor’s talents seem wasted here since he gets stuck as the film’s boy scout, but his character’s father, played by Blu Mankuma, is amazing as one half of a jazz duo on a doomed cruise. He and his partner, played by George Segal, bring some seriously affecting emotional weight as two old guys who know their time is up. Harrelson is awesome as the batshit insane, juicy pickle-chomping Charlie Frost, although his part was way too small. Cusack, being Cusack, is pretty great, even though I have no idea why the film is so hard on potential stepfather Gordon. Emmerich pushes the “family values” message pretty hard, but he’s just a straight up dick to Gordon despite A) being a nice guy and B) kind of being important to saving most of the principles.
The same could be said for Platt’s character. The film doesn’t have a villain per say (unless you count that jerkass lamp of Heaven, the sun!!!), but Platt’s Carl comes close, in that he’s the only one who puts zero effort into saving his loved ones. While one could argue that he’s focused on saving the wealthy, I would in turn assert that he subscribes to the notion that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. HE IS LIKE SPOCK. Dude is working on saving the human race, which means that a few people he knows might bite it.
Reflection: A minor European character dedicated to preserving the world’s most famous artistic achievements is named Roland. He dies in an explosion. Coincidence?
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