Twenty-Twelve-Step

Well. 2012 is basically the sumnation of everything, a neat package in which Roland Emmerich reenacts Genesis 6-9 in the most hilariously overwrought of all possible ways. What does it say about our society that we can seamlessly create Himalaya-devouring tsunamis with digital magic but putting realistic cracks in the plaster is still beyond Hollywood's set dressers? The end is near, that's what. Anyway, uh, spoilers.

I expected a movie with no plot, but as the reviews have noted, the film suffers from a surfeit of plots. Every character has a back-story-and-a-half, and though it plys the usual American eschatology in which the end of the world plays as the orchestra under the operatic tale of familial reconciliation, there is something gleefully refreshing about the fact that it actually spends a great deal of time with the blended Cusack clan nowhere to be seen.

In the end, the Chinese, at the direction of the rest of the world, have built some big boats. "Arks!" As Oliver Platt says, "Leave it to the Chinese." Only they could build on such a scale. The boats are designed to withstand the force of the world-ending flood, and yet the gear mechanisms that close their doors can be jammed up by a 2" penumatic hose. "We can't engage the engines until we get a hard seal on the door!" cries the captain as they float on collision course toward the North Face of Everest. Did Cusack jam it up in the first place? Will he swim to the rescue? Reader, he will.

With three seconds left before the end, the Noble Black Scientist realizes that the billionaires whose bought admission to the boats he was only moments ago decrying as desperately unfair are going to be left behind to die, and he makes an impassioned plea to save them. Oliver Platt, a chief-of-staff type who's now in charge-ish, reminds him for the ten zillionth time that preserving a nucleus of human subjects is more important than the interest of fairness. This is a reasonable point, and that makes Platt the closest thing to evil, but Emmerich is in a forgiving mood, and no one in the movie is truly bad.

In the end, it turns out that Africa has survived the flood. Africa! Earlier in the film we see a few of the the two-of-every-animal (really!) brought aboard--giraffes, gorillas, rhinos. So, I guess that was a waste of helicopters, eh? I imagine the Africans, upon discovering that they, seemingly alone, have survived the cataclysm, can only respond with a hearty "Fuck yeah!" Until, of course, the boats full of white people show up. "Oh, hell no! Fooled us once, shame on you, but you . . . won't get fooled again!" Or, as my buddy put it on the walk back to the car, "Hello white people. Those are some nice boats. Would you like to see our bullets?"