The End of the World As We Know It

According to the Mayans' goofy calendar, the end of the world is scheduled for December 21, 2012. But, realistically, the collapse of humanity might have started with the release of 2012. Because, as disaster movies go, 2012 is a disaster of a movie.

Don't get me wrong. I love those kinds of flicks. They were a mainstay of my youth as essayed by the campy likes of Irwin Allen. Put a bunch of big name stars on the back end of their careers into some sort of natural calamity. Get them wet. Get them hot. Get them scared. You got yourself a damn good cinematic ride.

I can remember them all with glee. Pilot Dean Martin has knocked up stewardess Jacqueline Bisset and then must fly a jet damaged by a bomb made by Van Heflin. Robert Wagner is having an affair with his secretary and then burns to a crisp. Shelley Winters has to swim around the bowels of a sunken cruise ship. She performs stunts worthy of Shamus at Sea World and then dies. Lorne Greene hoists his co-workers out of an earthquake-damaged office building with nothing more than a rope made of pantyhose. Jennifer Jones falls out of the scenic elevator in the world's tallest building on fire. Not only will the fall kill her, but the producers deliciously make her hit a terrace on the way down.

Fun, fun, fun, fun.

2012, trying to follow in the same footsteps, is not, not, not, not. But, as the ad tells us, "we were warned."

With special effects that look about a grade below those on a video arcade game at Nathan's, 2012 tells the story of the end of our planet. The disjointed plot points in the first five minutes point to the world's ecology as the reason behind the mayhem. Warming, cooling, tides, the sun. Who the hell could figure it out? I am guessing Al Gore was front and center on opening night, chowing down on a box of Goobers. I'd hate to think that this is going to be my ultimate fate for not using a government-sanctioned light bulb.

Amid all the obligatory introductions of characters you don't give a shit about, we meet John Cusack, a renowned author who also seems to be the driver of a stretch limousine. Obviously, book royalties are not what they are used to be. He, of course, is divorced from his wife with two kids. There is a stepfather in the mix. Family dysfunction and planet doom. What a dramatic mix. If that's not bad enough, the little daughter wets her pants regularly. What is this world coming to?

For some bizarre reason, Los Angeles gets hit by nature first. Cusack pilots his limousine through the firestorm and manages to do so without even being in the car pool lane on the 405. I want him taking me the next time I am late for a flight out of LAX. Meanwhile, the LA roads are littered with debris and it's still not as bad as the first day of every month when Mexicans who can't pay their rent must strap their mattresses to the car roof and find a new hovel in Garden Grove.

Back in Washington DC, we meet the government and, as in real life, I'm unimpressed. Danny Glover plays the role of a Black ineffective President and that would have been an original concept if 2012 had been made two years ago. Now, it's like watching the news. To compound the issue, Glover speaks with a lisp. Is it his acting choice or simply bad dentures? We never really find out, as the President is washed out by a tidal wave. If only that would really happen in 2012...

This mess could have used the help of some big name guest stars. All we get, however, is George Segal. Yes, that George Segal. He plays a jazz musician on a cruise ship, which is probably a step up from what the actor's really been doing lately---appearing at the opening of a Rite Aid on Fairfax. But, in 2012, that's all you get. The guest cast of any Love Boat episode would have sufficed. We didn't even merit that.

2012 is two and a half hours long and feels like a week. The last hour of the movie is incomprehensible. The survivors head to China where the US Government has stashed away some giant arks. When were these built? You have no clue, except this might have been where our stimulus tax dollars went. Perhaps jobs created that were "ark-ready." Of course, it's a race against time before the last tsunamis hit. It was impossible to understand what was happening next. There were so many crashes and explosions. We were constantly told to brace for impact. I began to feel like the instructor at a driving school in Chinatown.

The editing of the climactic scenes was so bad that you couldn't tell who lived, who died, or who was simply off at the Columbia Pictures commissary getting lunch. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich once again distingushes himself as somebody who couldn't direct traffic in the Sahara Desert at midnight. A Fellini movie without subtitles would have made more sense to me.

Eventually, all bad things must come to an end. And so does 2012. The audience leaves the theater in worse shape than the characters. The survivors live to start Day One of the new Earth. And the little girl no longer needs to wear rubber underpants. Praise God! Apparently, in this new order, the center of the world is now Africa and I may need to kill myself.

I would have loved to see 2012 in the hands of Irwin Allen. Or one of those goofy directors at Universal back in the 70s, who would have seen fit to cast this movie with Susan St. James, Eleanor Parker, and Marty Allen. But, instead, we got this swill.

Gee, the end of the world should have been so much more fun.

Dinner last night: Szechwan beef at Oriental Diner in Hawthorne.