I don’t know about you, but I’d gladly pay $12 to watch Los Angeles gloriously sliding into the Pacific like so much rubble in Roland Emmerich’s exhilaratingly nutty, mother-of-all-disaster movies “2012.”
Emmerich, who did a job on New York City in “The Day After Tomorrow,” thankfully spares us further apocalyptic scenes here. But this showman shows no such mercy toward Las Vegas and Vatican City (watch for a great sight gag in the Sistine Chapel), both swallowed up by an “inbalance” in the Earth’s crust that, among other things, relocates the South Pole to Wisconsin.
It must have been hard to top his demolition of the White House in “Independence Day,” but Emmerich rises to the occasion. I’m not sure I will ever forget the sight of a tsunami-borne aircraft carrier bearing down on both the structure and an astonished President Danny Glover, tending to victims on the White House front lawn while his hissable chief adviser (Oliver Platt) has taken control of the nation.
As you might suspect, the “2012” dialogue is pure Velveeta, delivered by the likes of the great John Cusack as Jackson, a failed sci-fi-novelist-turned-cliffhanger-prone limo driver/divorced dad.
His vacation with the kids in Yellowstone National Park results in an encounter with a government scientist Adrian (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is coincidentally one of fewer than 400 readers of Jackson’s epic “Farewell, Atlantis.”
Also conveniently on hand is a conspiracy theorist (Woody Harrelson, way over the top even by his own standards) who alerts Jackson not only to the impending “rapture” but to the government’s planned evacuation effort, for “genetic specimens,” of the super-wealthy.
“The Day After Tomorrow” made a stab at plausibility by invoking global warming, but you don’t have to be a geology major (as I was, briefly) to understand that the mumbo jumbo offered here is but a pretext for lots of eye-popping earthquakes, fireballs (Yellowstone memorably turns into an active volcano) and tidal waves (that engulf, among other things, a massive cruise ship where George Segal performs).
Did I mention this is great fun?
Only a movie critic without a sense of humor would question whether you could really drive a limo straight through a collapsing skyscraper. Or how a plastic surgeon with minimal flying experience (Tom McCarthy, better known as the director of “The Visitor”) could co-pilot a massive Russian cargo jet on a trip to China. Or whether the Dalai Lama really owns a pickup truck.
That plastic surgeon is the boyfriend of Jackson’s ex-wife (Amanda Peet), who figures in one of the film’s two romantic subplots. When he isn’t monitoring the apocalypse, government scientist Adrian flirts with the president’s daughter (Thandie Newton), who has been tasked with saving the world’s “culture,” a process that inadvertently triggers the Princess Diana-like death of the head of the Louvre.
The film’s 158 minutes are crammed with such laugh-provoking digressions and dialogue, as well as more movie references than you’d find in half a dozen Quentin Tarantino features. “Titanic,” “Earthquake,” “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” “The Hurricane” — they’re all here and more, complete with Adam Lambert musically channeling Maureen McGovern (“The Poseidon Adventure”) as he warbles over the closing credits.
About the only thing that’s missing from “2012” (except sanity) is 3-D, IMAX and Sensurround. For those, I would gladly pay $20 a ticket.