The World leaders are aware of this impending doom in the year 2009 and have been preparing for it by building these massive arks that will one day rebuild humanity.  John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis an old published writer now limo driver.  He’s trying to get him family to one of these arks in China.  There are also other characters in this film in various locations that are all in danger.  None of them are very important.  That’s not what this movie is about.  Anyone who has seen a trailer of TV commercial for this movie already knows it’s all about the spectacle.  Roland Emmerich knows people are coming to see these movies to see him destroy the world once again.  Seeing his films can be compared to watching a horror movie franchise.  People come to these horror movies to see what new and creative ways the killer can dispatch his victims; in Roland Emmerich films, people come to see what new and creative ways the director can destroy national landmarks (he uses a lot of water this time out, which he probably got a taste for when he used a tidal wave on New York in “The Day After Tomorrow”). 

The commercials for this film show such amazing effects as a car speeding along LA roads with the ground caving in right behind it!  Another sequence is a plane leaving LA while buildings fall all around it!  The sequences just last longer if you see the movie.  The effects look great and there is a surprise or two along the way, but there is never much tension.  Movie audiences are getting numb when it comes to suspending their disbelief, a major requirement for these films.  “2012” doesn’t really give them anything to keep them at the edge of their seats.  One pleasant surprise is Woody Harrelson, fresh off the success of his last film, “Zombieland”.  He plays Charlie, a doomsayer with his own AM talk radio show.  He’s so great in his scenes that he is almost his own special effect.

The midnight screening of “2012” was sold out at the Cinemark theater in Boca Raton.  If you and your friends didn’t get there early enough you were not sitting together.  After the movie got out comments such as, “Bad” and “That sucked” can be heard.  A couple of teenagers were having a laugh about the limo escaping LA scene.  The film will undoubtedly be the #1 movie this weekend and probably go on to be a big success.  Perhaps that is one of the 2009 signs that things ARE going to end in 2012.