2012

2012

The first thing that strikes you queueing up for Roland Emmerich's new end-of-world disaster movie '2012' is whether it the title is some kind of indication of when you'll make it back out into daylight. At 158 minutes there's clearly quite a lot of disaster to fit in... that's Lord of the Rings kind of length. But then we are talking about the whole world ending, not just America. That kind of thing has got to take time.

The second thing you've got to get to grips with is just how far you're going to put the rational laws of science, chance and reality aside in order to enjoy this film. By that I don't mean the mysterious predictions of the Mayan's about the world ending in 2012, or even the science gobbledy-gook about how solar flares are heating up the earth's crust (though there's a valiant attempt to make it sound possible when you get to see a science movie created by none other than Woody Harrelson), No, I mean how many times can a car/van/limo dodge past falling rocks, speed under collapsing buildings and drive just fast enough to stay ahead of opening cracks in the earth's surface. Because, be assured, there's a lot of that in this film. In fact, my only conclusion is that every vehicle John Cusack and his family - the central characters in 2012 - has the boot stuffed with cats... all of whom are using up their nine lives at a rate of knots. Cat after cat is throwing their lives away in order to survive against the odds. I have to admit, I struggled to keep the faith on that one: it gets kind of ridiculous.

But ridiculous is really where this film starts.... and then moves on into darker realms of downright daft, before ending up in totally preposterous. Even if you manage to cope with LA and most of California disappearing in the early part of the film - somewhere in hour 1 - you haven't seen anything until you get to how the remaining humans are going to survive. I can't spoil the plot here, but believe me, it's the kind of storyline that takes what little credibility it has left and happily throws it away on some kind of science fiction weirdness. When the 'captain' arrives in what looks like a Star Trek outfit, you know things have really gone off the deep end.

That said, there's no denying the special effects are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. This is definitely a new standard in what's possible. It's impressive, although not enough to carry 158 minutes without a more engaging plot.

'2012' was only ever meant to be enjoyable Hollywood rubbish, and it kind of achieves that. It's passable for a popcorn movie, but there's no way I'd ever want to experience the whole thing all over again on dvd. Seeing the end of the world once is enough

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