Hi, fellow Spilldos. Fouapa here, bringing you an early review of the new doomsday flick from this asshole over there.

I know, it's not very nice to call him that, but surely you'd feel like me if you had to sit through his movie. I actually went to the cinema yesterday but couldn't get around writing my review...I just wanted to forget about it for good, pretty much like I imagine you'd do after a gorilla raped you. But here I am, ready to vomit all over this movie, which you already guessed is complete bullshit. Spoilers ahead btw.

The Plot
First major problem: the advertising campaign of the movie online is very, very misleading. If you've seen the fake IHC website, you've probably assumed this organisation would be in the movie, at least mentionned...well no, it's not. I mean...wtf? If you go through this website, you'll find info about a lottery, elections for a new post-2012 leader, simulations of solar flares, giant planet hitting earth...So you'd suppose you'd find those elements in the movie. I was personnaly expecting to see both solar flares and a giant planet, even maybe aliens. It would have made sense to aggregate all the theories around 2012 in this movie, which I thought the website hinted at. But no, the flick will only show you one solar flare, happening in 2009 and causing the earth's crust to dislodge and shift by 2012.

As for the IHC, it might be mentionned, I might have missed it, but it' snot clearly developped. A great shame when you look at all the effort put in it online.


What's so bad about it?
I know this wasn't supposed to be a good movie anyway, I know that. I would confess that I love CGI-amped up apocalyptic fests, i really do. So I didn't walk in with high expectations acting-wise or plot-wise. That being said, there are the elements that make it a complete disaster:

- Emmerich needs to be slapped right in the face for the way he introduces his characters and builds the grounds of the story: the first 40 minutes are entirely consisting of short scenes where nothing much happens with no apparent links to each other. You jump from different places in the globe to different time frames, trying to grasp the faintest sense out of it. It is tideous and disappointing: in fact there are too much characters and their backstories are weakly presented even though Emmerich would like us to believe actual work as been put into the writing.

- The acting is not just bad, it's scandalous. Poor John Cusack is struggling to keep a straight face delivering ridiculous lines while Woody Harrelson, who's on screen for a mind-blowing 10 minutes, is all over the place...Weird performances wouldn't really hurt the movie to me if you couldn't see the attempts of the director to make it pass as serious and deep film-making.

- The movie was shot by a monkey. I'm especially referring to the third act, where the shots are always really close, and in HD. It is very weird and gives you the feeling to watch a home video and takes you out of the movie. You can actually see the set so well that is loses any sense of realism. But maybe it's just me.

But at least the CGI is cool, right?
Right, right. There are some pretty great destruction sequences in 2012. The CGI is honest, you feel like you're watching a video game sometimes but that's something you should expect nowadays. However, some creativity has been injected in these scenes of complete chaos and I found myself enjoying the hell out of them. I mean fuck, call me childish but seeing a limo driving through Hollywood collapsing on itelf, bashing through glass skyscrapers and barely making it under a falling highway bridge gives me the chills. It's over the fucking top like you won't believe it, but that's what I walked in for...The only problem is: there are maybe 3 cool scenes like this, in a 2h38 minutes movie. You've got to be fucking kidding me.


You were warned
yeah, I couldn't miss this pun, I'm sorry. But hey, as always I can only account for my personal experience, you might enjoy it if you can really switch every single fonction of you body defining you as a human being. To me, it was a complete disappointment, although my expectations were quite low. I feel cheated by the marketing campaign, and i should know better, I fucking work in advertising!

Thanks for reading,
Fouapa