2012

Does director Roland “The Day After Tomorrow” Emmerich put on a really big show? Well, sorta. 2012 is often big and noisy, but it’s more often bloated and dumb as a rock. One doesn’t expect disaster porn to do anything except stimulate the lizard brain, so mileage may vary. Here we follow the disaster-movie template set by Irwin “The Poseidon Adventure” Allen, as a bunch of disparate characters are thrown together as the world ass-over-teakettles on them. John Cusack is our hero, a failed novelist who uses the chaos to hook back up with his ex and figure out how to stop his daughter from wetting the bed. As it is, the flick is 20 minutes of CGI jockeys ending the world as we know it and two-plus extra hours of bad melodrama. Emmerich samples from the choice cuts of every disaster movie ever made (and more than a few best-of moments from his own oeuvre). Feather River Cinemas, Paradise Cinema 7 and Tinseltown. Rated PG-13