You can tell by the audience's inevitable disdainful laughter with you in the theater that, on a narrative level, "2012" is a flop.
So ham-and-cheese heavy is the dimwitted dialogue (by Harold Kloser and Roland Emmerich) that half the time you feel like you're watching a remedial screenwriting project.
There is plenty of guilty pleasure in watching a twin-engine plane flown by an amateur pilot between two falling skyscrapers, and impossibly passing through the falling rubble without being hit.
Essentially, the story describes a shift in the Earth's crust that comes sooner than White House-connected scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chewetel Ejiofor) predicted.
Divorced author/part time limo-driver Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) borrows his son and daughter from his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) to take them on a vacation in Yellowstone National Park.
Once camped, Jackson meets Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), an apocalypse-predicting wacko living in a mobile home from which he broadcasts his doomsday ravings.
Mother Nature's proverbial poo hits the fan as volcanoes erupt, earthquakes shake, California slips into the ocean, and lots of people die without a drop of blood shown on-screen.
Think of "2012" as global-apocalypse-lite.
You get all of the disaster without any of the gore.
Sure the blu-ray DVD will look great on your home theater as ambient background for your next house party, but that's about it.
Rated PG-13. 158 mins.
