Rules of the disaster genre : Fat people die, crude foreigners die...

Another entry in the movie as special effects marathon video game gone gargantuan is "2012," a ridiculously titled movie that will fall at the top of most alphabetical lists unfortunately. It's not a horrible movie by any means, although it ought to be - there are so many lines spoken with such grave earnestness that the script must be a hoot to read, if there even is one - because there are enourmous stretches with no words at all (good for foreign distribution!), just orchestral crescendos and amazing scenes of disgitalized disaster. The stakes just get higher with each one of these movies - back to The Day the Earth Stood Still or Godzilla, which would look so tame and lame today on through Titanic, through Independence Day and Armageddon - and now it's not a matter of seeing some buildings fall but here we see the Earth's core give way and the entire continent slides into the ocean, creating a new Waterworld (to summon another movie that was a disaster in every possible way). Guess what? It's fun to watch this stuff, for a while, until you (or I) eventually can't take any more - not from excitement but from torpor. Ugh, the plot line such as it is, so banal and so predictable - which couples will get (back) together, who will survive. Law of the genre: fat people die, crude foreigners die, sensitive/weak scientists die, lead actors survive, cute kids survive. I guess you could call this movie summer escapism, but it's escapism without a heart or a purpose - the few artful movies in the disaster genre do tell a good story and do get you to feel for the characters and root them on - but this one will keep you entertained and leave you with thrumming eardrums and that's all.