In the year 2009 a scientist, Adrian Helmsley [Chiwetel Ejiofor], discovers that something odd is happening with the earth and figures out that the world as we know it is going to end in the year 2012.  As the day of reckoning comes a regular everyday guy, Jackson Curtis [John Cusack], takes it upon himself to save him and his family from this end of days event.

Roland Emmerich has decided to finally utilize every kind of natural disaster that you can think of to bombard your brain with so much destruction that you have to ask yourself if you even care anymore.  I must admit that I had very low expectations going in and left happily surprised with the movie.  It suffers from really only one real problem, which is that it is too long.  In the second act when the world is actually ending Mr. Emmerich definitely overdid it.  I felt after the first twenty minutes of the act that the world would actually never end and move on into the third and final act that is the post apocalypse and survival period for Jackson and his family.  Emmerich really didn’t need to personally show me every city in the world being destroyed by tsunami, earthquakes, volcanoes, and other disasters that I don’t want to think of.

What Emmerich did do well was he decided to create a slew of believable characters, with the exception of Charlie Frost [Woody Harrelson], and some nice chase sequences for me to enjoy.  Well I guess Charlie isn’t that far out there as a believable character because he really is just a space nut crazy conspiracy theorist with his own radio station attempting to get his own truth (that the government is hiding something and the world is going to end) which ends up being true.  The only thing that made Charlie feel so unrealistic is that it was very obvious that he was placed in the story just for some comedic relief, but in a good way.  The most annoying character of the movie award has to go to President Thomas Wilson [Danny Glover].  President Thomas Wilson is one of the most inemotive US presidents that I’ve seen in a film since the George W. cameo in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

Some of the initial action sequences with Jackson driving through LA in his limo while the entire of the city is falling apart is totally unbelievable in that they would be one second ahead of the destruction like that but once you realise how gorgeous what you are seeing is you forget about that and begin to just enjoy the moment and bite your fingernails wondering if they’re going to make it out in time.

I guess the thing that made me know that this movie wasn’t that bad was that once the action stopped and Emmerich decided to move onto the bureaucratic side of things that occur in the third act with Carl Anheuser [Oliver Platt] and Adrian Helmsley I wasn’t bored out of my mind, I was still invested in what was about to happen in the movie.

In the end I think the film suffers from too long a second act and a couple one note characters that can be forgiven once you go see this on a big screen so you can soak in some of the great visuals displayed in the film.

IMDB says 6.7/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 38%

I say 7.0/10