Review: 2012
Nov. 14th, 2009 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficIt's exactly what you'd expect. It's not worse, like Transformers 2, which promised giant robot action and didn't deliver (in fact, it stomped on your shipment, then sold it on eBay, then wrapped a poo up and delivered it to you instead). But it's not any smarter than it has to be. In fact, I think it's as dumb as it needs to be, plus it also got hammered and is now nursing a hangover (the movie never does reveal how the Mayans knew that the sun would get POed at us and start shooting mutant neutrinos at us, which in turn cause the inside of the Earth to get gooier than usual and cause a million different disasters at once).
Maybe now that Dollhouse is canceled, Joss Whedon should get a job rewriting disaster movies. All the witty dialogue you can fit in between fx, and there would actually be a reason for everyone to end up depressed and alone.
I should mention that the filmmakers have probably never heard of feminism. There are female characters, but you get the feeling they're just there to tick off the checklist so the movie can be sold to women, just like the Indian characters who primarily exist so the movie can sell in India and so on. None of them have any bearing on the plot. There are, like, five scenes when the main party is flying around in an airplane and the pilot says "you guys should come see this," so ALL THE MEN go up to the cockpit while the women sit and, I don't know, plan a sewing circle? I thought the movie was called 2012, not 1912.
And there's something disturbing in how cynical it is to have the earnest black characters end up yelling at the President's slimy white weasel (why do these noble presidents always have slimy weasels in their administrations? It must get annoying having to constantly say "No, Neville, we can't solve the housing crisis with orphan tears") to do the right thing. We, of course, know he's a bad guy because he sneers at religion. Oh, and he's old and fat, while the good guys are young and pretty. It's all so patently false that you miss Will Smith, who at least gave ID4 some zip. When you long for the authenticity of the Fresh Prince, you know a wrong turn has been taken.
These kind of popcorn movies always get the last line "not a bad way to kill two hours." At two hours and forty minutes, 2012 does at least kill more of your day for the same price.
ETA: Is it just me, or does the trailer to Kick Ass make it look like Sky High 2: The New Class? Which I would so be up for, by the way. That plant chick was hot.
Maybe now that Dollhouse is canceled, Joss Whedon should get a job rewriting disaster movies. All the witty dialogue you can fit in between fx, and there would actually be a reason for everyone to end up depressed and alone.
I should mention that the filmmakers have probably never heard of feminism. There are female characters, but you get the feeling they're just there to tick off the checklist so the movie can be sold to women, just like the Indian characters who primarily exist so the movie can sell in India and so on. None of them have any bearing on the plot. There are, like, five scenes when the main party is flying around in an airplane and the pilot says "you guys should come see this," so ALL THE MEN go up to the cockpit while the women sit and, I don't know, plan a sewing circle? I thought the movie was called 2012, not 1912.
And there's something disturbing in how cynical it is to have the earnest black characters end up yelling at the President's slimy white weasel (why do these noble presidents always have slimy weasels in their administrations? It must get annoying having to constantly say "No, Neville, we can't solve the housing crisis with orphan tears") to do the right thing. We, of course, know he's a bad guy because he sneers at religion. Oh, and he's old and fat, while the good guys are young and pretty. It's all so patently false that you miss Will Smith, who at least gave ID4 some zip. When you long for the authenticity of the Fresh Prince, you know a wrong turn has been taken.
These kind of popcorn movies always get the last line "not a bad way to kill two hours." At two hours and forty minutes, 2012 does at least kill more of your day for the same price.
ETA: Is it just me, or does the trailer to Kick Ass make it look like Sky High 2: The New Class? Which I would so be up for, by the way. That plant chick was hot.
