Disaster strikes?

2012 (2009)

Essentially 2012 is everything you would expect it to be, CGI and cheese. If you have ever seen a disaster movie then you have already seen 2012, it may have been a different scenario but pretty much everything that happens is fairly obvious as is who is going to survive once all the characters have been introduced. Where 2012 does differ from your average big Hollywood disaster film is that it is not offensively American-centric, there are actually other nations in the world and the US president does not just dictate to everyone else how stuff is going to go down but other than that the plot does not have much going for it. There seem to be a few minor plot holes but they don't massively break anything and lets face it if you are going to watch a blockbuster like this you should not really be expecting to have to engage your brain anyway.

The other main strength of disaster movies is always the special effects and I have to say that CGI has sort of killed the genre for me. It is really hard to be impressed when you know how much can be done by CGI these days. In the past there was some mystique about how something was achieved in a film but these days you know it is all just some actors in front of a green screen. I also think that CGI is not completely 100% photo realistic yet and maybe that is some of the reason why heavy use of CGI in every action sequence like in 2012 stands out so much. Right now I think we have got to the point where CGI is just a crutch for some directors and does detract at times.

The other issue I have with the direction of 2012 is while we are not getting to Michael Bay levels of flash cutting it does go too far that way at some points in the film. When there is something cool happening lets show it on the screen please not cut, cut, cut, cut and try to give the viewer an epileptic fit.

Overall I think this is a pretty average film that manages to miss the pitfalls of being stupid enough to annoy the viewer so I give it a 3/5.