"The moment we stop fighting for each other, that's the moment we lose our humanity." - No, really. He actually say that...
You don't have to make necessarily be funny to make a comedy. You can also be serious too. Laughter is something that this movie is good at generating but, as you can probably guess, its was probably meant to be taken be serious. Now I am not necessarily saying that watching billions of people dying is fun, but the complete way this disaster take place is so unrealistic and fantastic, that you may giggle and laugh ironically "Oh really?". I guess when Rolland Emmerich decide to retire from the disaster movies, he decide to go out in style putting everything he know and could into his last 2-hours long flick.
Story
Do you think there is any "plot"? Its your good ol' go from point A to point B plot (pretty standard to disaster movies). Jackson Curtis (played by John Cusack) is divorced from his wife and discovers the world is going to s*** and he must protect his stranged family and together reach the Arks, built by the world government to save the last remnants of mankind.
The Good
- The CGI effects were nice sometimes.
- Some of the acting is actually good though despite the godawful material they were giving. John Cusack, Oliver Platt and The Operative make very good performances, but Danny Glover and Tandie Newton fall flat face on floor.
The Bad
- Oh God. Where do I even start?
- CGI overuse reaches critical mass in this movie. If you hate such effects, there is enough CGI in 2012 to drive you to Arkham Asylum. Even if they are impressive to look at, its very clear its CGI and not for one second it made me think "Oh s*** this is real! This might happen :O"
- The pacing. Oh God, the pacing is dreadful. They manage to drag this plotless abomination down, almost felt like it was 3 hours long. The start is too slow and they introduce like 5 different plotlines until we reach the destruction, and somehow, Emmerich manage to prolong our suffering until the ending sequence, where so much crap is happening at the same time and you just want this to end now.
- The characters are just as deep and dimensional than a paper tissue. You have John Cusack playing David Levinson Niko Tatopoulos Daniel Jackson Jackson Curtis who is your standard action survivor trying to save his family, you of course have his bratty kids, his ex-wife, her boyfriend you know its going to bite it so that they can reunite at the end of the movie. You have Oliver Platt playing the movie's "antagonist" that we are supposed to hate him, but turns out he is the most pragmatic character in the movie, so its kinda difficult to disagree with him. He is also one of the few likable characters that manage to make it to the end without dying. And that is not even bringing the stereotypes on the table.
- The worst offender is the complete and utter exaggeration of the destruction around them. There is not a normal reason or pattern to the destruction around, suddenly all cities are sinking into the oceans, volcanic eruptions can be just as powerful as 10 A-Bombs, Christ the Redeemer is falling over my head and there is way too much water for this colossal flood waves. Its all I was half expecting the Earth to split itself in half (maybe that was a better ending to this travesty). Its AAAAH!! BOOOM!!! KABLAAAAM!!!! MERRDDAAAA!!!!! KABOOM!!! Its even worse than a Michael Bay movie in that regard.
Veredict
3/10 - If you dare to sit through this piece of crap, you may laugh hysterically at its absolutely over-the-top ridiculous nature and how seriously takes itself because that is the only redeeming value of this now outdated movie.
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