2012

Roland Emmerich made "Independence Day" and is a disaster movie auteur, so you would think he would have seen in the middle of this one the essential problem. What makes disaster movies work is some kind of flaw in humanity that nature or some outside force is correcting. Here, however, it's just the Earth is going ot blow up. So if they story isn't going to work, the visuals had to be spectacular. Unfortunatley, I think the filmmakers over-reached their budget. You can see that the visuals were SUPPOSED to be spectacular, but they just don't get there. They look low-rent and not finished. Like a first draft of digital effects. There's also an overdose of exposition via news reports, always a warning sign that you're watching a sloppily made film. I had hoped to see John Cusak infuse this with a little charm or wit, but he's really hamstrung by an unlikeable character with no discernible arc. There were few moments where he had scenes with Woodey Harrelson (in an inspired, if inspid cameo) that were fun to watch. But they were crushed under the weight of the uninteresting exposition.