Review: 2012 - One of the Best Comedies of the Year
Right after I watched 2012 I tweeted the following statement… “2012 was one of the funniest movies this year. I laughed my ass off the whole time because of how bad it was.” It was also one of the worst movie going experiences I ever had. This was due to the fact that someone sitting around us was farting through the whole damn movie, with the worst smelling gas ever produced by a human being.
I know that Roland Emmerich wasn’t trying to make a comedy, he was going for a high octane serious emotional thrill ride, and it ended up being incredibly funny. I laughed through the entire movie. I laughed just as much in 2012 as I did while watching The Hangover. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing, the movie treats the audience like they are idiots, constantly pointing out the most obvious details in the dialogue. It's one of those films where they need to explain everything that is going on every ten minutes.
There is no way anyone can go see this movie and take it seriously! It was absolutely and utterly ridiculous in every way shape and form. I really would love to watch this full movie with the soundtrack of Raising Arizona, that would have taken the movie to a whole new level of greatness -- like in that little mash-up trailer we showed you.
The best part of the movie was the special effects. Those don’t let you down. If there’s one thing Roland Emmerich knows how to do, it’s making world destruction look good. But that’s it. Other than that, this movie is a rotten egg filled with a bad story, terrible dialogue, and atrocious acting. This movie wasn’t made because the script and story was good, that’s for sure. It was made based on a basic idea of using 2012 as a means to destroy the world. What really sucked, is the fact that they barely touched on the whole history of the 2012 Mayan calendar. There is such a cool story to be told there and they breezed through it in the form on a short animated explanation, given by a crazy Woody Harrelson.
If you’ve seen the trailer for this film, then you pretty much have seen the whole movie. John Cusack is Jackson Curtis and he’s trying to keep his family from dying. The destruction is constantly following them, the whole time they are barely escaping. The world is crumbling down and blowing up all around them, but they always mange to stay one inch ahead of the destruction. They were even engulfed by the destruction a couple of times, but of course they managed to escape the clutches of death. The film has every Hollywood trope and cliché ever done.
The first half of this shallow spectacle is more entertaining than the second half, for the fact that the movie just loses its flavor. I will say this film has the highest body count of people being killed than any other movie I have ever seen. One day Roland Emmerich will just blow up the entire world, that’s the only thing that can top this film in number of deaths.
Look, you know what you’re getting yourself into when seeing a Roland Emmerich movie. It is best viewed if you are with a group of friends who can have fun bagging on the movie the whole time. 2012 was definitely one of the funniest movies that I’ve seen this year, even though it wasn’t supposed to be. Was I entertained? Yes. Was it a good movie? No. Is it worth spending money on? I leave that up for you to decide.
If you’ve seen it what did you think? Do you even plan on seeing it?