11.16.2009

Stop Giving Roland Emmerich Money...

...or he'll keep making crap like this. After the dubious accomplishments of directing Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow and 10,000 BC, his streak of dreck continues with the abysmal 2012. What's shocking is not that it's a complete and total failure; what's shocking is that legitimate talent like John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt and Danny Glover all signed up to go down with this ship. Woody Harrelson's in it, too, but remember, I called it a list of "legitimate talent."

While not as aggressively and angrily incompetent as Transformers 2, this nonetheless deserves to give that piece of trash a run for its money at the Razzies, awards given out for the worst movie of the year. 2012 is so earth-shatteringly moronic that for much of its brutally overlong runtime (2 hrs and 40 mins) I sat, slack-jawed and stunned, as untold millions of CGI wizardry went to portray John Cusack driving or flying away from a series of escalating earthquakes and doomsday fireballs, only to save humanity by unwinding a rope caught in some oversized gears.

This is about where I'm normally subjected to a variant of the "hey, it's a big summer movie, it's not supposed to be smart" argument. No. Because in a world that's recently delivered blockbusters like Star Trek and Dark Knight, it's no longer acceptable to ignore idiocy as long as it "blowed up real good." So be smarter than I was, resist the money shots in the trailers of cities being destroyed on an unimaginable scale, and avoid at all costs. Waste of time, waste of money.