‘2012’: The end of the world as we know it

For Roland Emmerich and his producers, what the 2012 prophecy really means is making zillions of dollars at the box office to happily enjoy the remainder of their years by bringing us one of the longest and most overwrought disaster movies ever to be made.

Those of you who believe the 2012 phenomenon will be a life-changing spiritual journey, you are wrong; just like Valentine’s Day, Christmas and New Year’s, it’s really about squeezing out the dollars. One thing is for sure, the film is one hell of a ride, and it isn’t a surprise after Emmerich’s previous string of disast-o-ramas “Independence Day,” “Godzilla” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” where the most famous landmarks in the world came tumbling down like a house of cards. What is it about watching the Eiffel Tower crashing down or the ruination of the White House that is such a huge thrill? It’s almost like a masochistic joy rather than an infliction of terror, but maybe Emmerich has already gotten us accustomed to his signatory hullabaloo and involuntarily pushed us into a void numbness over monumental destruction.

Nevertheless, all is in place in “2012,” and the more ridiculous the ride gets, the more we find ourselves getting involved -- thankfully Emmerich knows how to use real characters rather than cardboard cutouts who find themselves in the middle of force majeure, even though cheesy bits are inevitable. Which brings me to another overused Hollywood cliché: the horribly written “I love you” dialogues before someone is about to die. Aren’t we all tired of cringing when we wish we were crying?

The film starts in 2009. Global scientists discover the core of the earth is shifting due to exponential heating of the sun. You know what that means: massive earthquakes, massive tidal waves and massive volcanic eruptions. One geologist, the humanist Adrian Helmsley, takes this up with the White House (instead of Morgan Freeman, we have Danny Glover as US president). It isn’t long before the global leaders embark on building a handful of massive arks in Tibet (!), kept secret from the global public. The catch is, only the rich, the powerful, political leaders (as if we needed them), some genetically diverse Homo sapiens and the animal kingdom will be included on board: This is the future of the human race. Well, no one said it was democratic, so let’s call it natural selection.

Of course, we cannot forget about the ordinary man, and in comes failed novelist Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), currently working as a limo driver. He lives in California, separated from his estranged wife (Amanda Peet) and his two kids, Lily and Noah. The earth’s crust hits California first (a little revenge fantasy there?), and Jackson has little time to save his family before the total collapse of the Golden State. We see him driving crazily through the cracks of the earth, accessing a small plane in the nick of time, flying it, then driving a van through the volcanic Yellowstone Park and then trying to reach a larger plane that will take them to China. Jackson finds out about the ark and will do anything to save his family’s life. Wouldn’t you?

“2012,” running at 158 minutes, is a full-blown blast of a nonstop rollercoaster ride where we become the meek subjects of an audiovisual abundance of CGI planetary mayhem. Never do we have a minute to breathe as we watch people trying to run away and surviving or trying to run away and being gobbled up by earth or just accepting their fate as massive tides swoop them up like shellfish. Would you believe it, there’s even a tsunami that reaches the Himalayas! The only consolation we’re left with is the Zen state of the Dalai Lama.

Sure there will be survivors, those in the ark, and guess where they will be headed once the earth takes its new geological form? To Africa, which turns out to be the only place in the world that hasn’t been devastatingly affected. A bit of Third World tit-for-tat politics never did anyone harm, and if you’ll remember, Emmerich included similar irony in “The Day After Tomorrow” when millions of Americans were trying to get into Mexico after their fair land’s lethal freeze out.