2012 Review

I'm not going to lie what drew me to this movie was the fact that it was full of special effects. In fact it looks to me like they spent three quarters of their budget on special effects and the other quarter on actors. John Cusaak was the star of the film and he did a mediocre job at it. He wasn't terrible but he was a stereo typical disaster movie star. He was a dead beat dad who was divorced and had to save the day and win back his ex wife. However Cusaak wasn't  the only stereotype. The other characters were too. There was the bitchy ex wife who had good reasons to be mad at Cusaak. Then there were the two kids, an angry boy who doesn't like Cusaak at first but then he does and the cute and sweet girl. Then there was the wise leader. In this case it was the president of the united states played by Danny Glover. But like all the other films Glover was boring and I really didn't care what happened to him. If he wasn't in the film it wouldn't make it any worse.
Like all other disaster films this one played it safe. There weren't any surprises or startling moments and worst of all unless you were a complete idiot you knew what the ending was going to be. I could have just got up and left before the film ended and I could tell anyone what the outcome was.
In the end everything works out ok and most of the characters survive which made the movie even more predictable .

But for a movie like this you just had to look past the disaster movie cliché plot and focus on the real reason you bothered to see this which were the immense action sequences. This film had everything from buildings collapsing to a massive tidal wave swallowing the white-house. And in scenes like one towards the beginning where Cusaak and the gang have to get to safety as the ground is collapsing inward made me feel like I was on a ride and seeing on the big-screen made it even better

In all I recommend seeing it once and only once and in the theater. If I tried to rent it and watch it again I think I would be bored. It wasn't something I would buy and watch over and over again. It's not that it wasn't memorable but that it wasn't unique and it could easily be confused with a movie like "Deep Impact"
I give it 3 out of 5 stars.