Special-effects-clogged '2012' overflows with recycled disasters

MOVIE REVIEW

If you compiled a highlight reel from the past 40 years of disaster movies, you'd get something like "2012," the latest exercise in global calamity from Roland Emmerich, who previously indulged his appetite for destruction with "Independence Day," "Godzilla" and "The Day After Tomorrow."

Hollywood's most successful one-trick pony, Emmerich claims to favor "human stories" over end-of-the-world spectacle, but watching "2012" is like watching a sausage machine explode. Its whopping 158-minute running time is crammed with state-of-the-art digital effects, and the phrase "Oh, the humanity!" simply never springs to mind.

As Hollywood struggles to lure recession audiences into theaters, it's pointless to knock Emmerich for his stagnant pursuit of spectacle. With his producing partner, Harald Kloser, Emmerich has concocted a preposterously entertaining diversion that regurgitates elements from just about any disaster flick you'd care to mention. That makes "2012" sensational and soporific.

If you've been watching The History Channel lately, you already know that the ancient Mayan calendar predicts that a global disaster will occur Dec. 21, 2012. In Emmerich's vision of prophesy, a colossal solar flare causes Earth's core to overheat, destabilizing the crust and reversing the magnetic poles. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and miles-high tsunamis are guaranteed to arrive just in time for Christmas. Billions will perish.

"2012" tracks a dozen characters through various calamities, ultimately uniting them in a high-tech Noah's Ark scenario. To their credit, Emmerich and Kloser connect these standard-issue survivors through plot coincidences that are remarkably easy to swallow.

With appropriate gravitas, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the obligatory earth-sciences expert who (in 2009) alerts the U.S. president (Danny Glover) and his scheming chief of staff (Oliver Platt) to the world-ending crisis looming just three years away, a time span covered in the movie's prologue, where we get hints of an elitist, wealth-driven strategy for humankind's survival, with Platt's character as the nefarious mastermind.

On the civilian side, John Cusack is well-cast as Jackson Curtis, a failed novelist whose ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and cute kids (Liam James, Morgan Lily) have happily settled in Los Angeles with a nice-guy plastic surgeon (Tom McCarthy), while Jackson scrapes by as a limo driver for a Russian billionaire (bigger-than-life Zlatko Buric).

Prompted by the accurate reports of a conspiracy theorist (Woody Harrelson, clearly having fun), Cusack leads his family through a series of miraculous escapes that takes them from devastated Los Angeles to the highest peaks of the Himalayas.

As the crisis escalates, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Yellowstone Park, Washington, D.C., Rio de Janeiro, the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel and a massive luxury liner are laid waste in spectacular fashion. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen the movie.

While the special effects don't disappoint in terms of technical achievement (the image of a drowning giraffe is particularly eerie), they're devoid of emotional impact. To expect anything more would be foolish, but let's hope there's room for genuine humanity in the story that follows: Emmerich is preparing a post-"2012" TV series about humankind's revival.

Jeff Shannon: j.sh@verizon.net