Disaster directorman Roland Emmerich returns with yet another doomsday scenario explosion-athon. This time he has the spectacularly shocking budget of $160,000,000, and has determined – having previously employed aliens and global warming to do us in - that the end of the world will now be down to the cosmic alignment of the planets of the solar system. Or something.
Luckily, this sequence of events only happens every so often. The Mayans knew about it though apparently, which makes you wonder why they didn’t put more effort into warning anyone. Wankers. Worse, show offs and wankers. (In fact, in real life, they apparently just calculated it as the end of a calendar cycle or era. Boring wankers.)
Unexpectedly for an Emmerich film, it isn’t an American that ascertains the fate of the world and has to persuade the powers-what-be that the end is nigh, but an Indian geologist. Only for a bit though. It soon is down to American geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to mention this to anyone of real importance i.e. THE PRESIDENT OF THE US OF STATES, as the Indian chap is far too bashful, and he is soon crashing governmental parties to give a report to Heavy-Handed Selfish-Man played by Carl Anheuser.
Within seconds the Most Important Man on Earth™, President Danny Glover is informed and the humanity saving ball gets rolling. Whilst the American government (and a selection of some of the more marketable administrations) keeps the ticking clock of kismet a clandestine timepiece to the common people; they use the money of the world’s richest to fund the secret construction of seven ‘arks’ in, bizarrely, the Himalayas to save the crème of humanity. Or rather the small portion of humanity that has €1,000,000,000 to spare per ticket, ‘People like Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and some rich Arabs.’
Flash-forward three years and Adrian is now trying to neck with the President’s daughter (played by Thandie Newton, in her sleep) and everybody else is ticking over without the knowledge that every single recognisable landmark in the world is about to explode in a ball of fuck.
Whilst all this is going on behind the scenes, John Cusack is mumbling along as the backwardly named Jackson Curtis, a divorced novelist-cum-limo driver who gets caught up in the shit-storm when he takes his overly-generic children to Yellowstone National Park for a camping trip. When the world begins to fall apart in front of his very eyes he quickly realises this could be a rather original way of winning his estranged wife back, cue the first of a series of impossible journeys.
A swift aside; why is it necessary for action movies – and above all ‘end-of-the-world’ action movies - to have that particular brand of child actor that makes you want to cleave your eyes and ears from your writhing body and devour them rather than have to sit through another nanosecond of their soul crushingly dire acting? There should be a rule that if a child of divorced parents refers to his father by his first name, in this instance the retch-worthy Jackson, then the film should come with a ‘Consistent and Severe Lust’ warning.
Anyway, it’s in Yellowstone that Jackson meets Charlie Frost, Woody Harrelson in a mildly enjoyable turn as radio-presenting hippie-nutter who always knew it was going to happen (rather like the crazy crop duster from Independence Day and Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow). It’s a shame to see him obliterated by an airborne chunk of flaming National Park as he is the only vaguely likeable character in the bum-battering near-three hours of film.
After the initial assault on your senses, which even by my CGI hating standards was impressive, you are left to drift into a narcoleptic state of uneasiness. This isn’t because there is any type of nervousness on the audience’s part, it’s because in the lulls between mega-blasts you have to listen to the film’s dialogue, which clunks along like Ringo Starr reading Thomas the Tank Engine on smack.
It begs the question, how can such ridiculously stereotyped characters still exist in these movies? They’re not even amusing. Having already off’d a Predator and been consistently ‘too old for this shit’, Glover plays the President Thomas Wilson. A man both self absorbed and utterly devoid of merit that he decides to wander the streets of America with other fodder and make his daughter an orphan rather than be useful on the ark.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the small, polite mannered Indian scientist who accepts his fate with a sense of wobbly-headed inevitability and the Chinese workers that only really want to make their grandparents proud. ‘Some rich Arabs’, which the camera unabashedly points at when Newton’s character suggests that it was capital rather than genes that earns you a place on the ark. (To which I thought, alright love, you’re the President’s daughter, not the next cure for cancer).
Cusack’s character isn’t actually that typical of the ex-family man, pining for his wife and children while struggling to show he can be of some use; he’s just the worst parent ever. He consistently places his children in the most possible danger that they could be in, which, taking into consideration it is the End of Days, is a considerable amount.
The Russian characters are beyond satire. The big fat businessman, his two fat twins – even more selfish and disgusting than their father and finally the blonde airhead the same age as the kids, all with accents so appalling it’s embarrassing – until, that is, you hear the voice of their outrageously good looking pilot. I honestly do not think there has been a worse accent in the history of cinema.
The cast, on paper, shouldn’t be that bad. But all in all, the best bit of acting in the entire picture is by a chicken. Flawless comedy timing. (Please note, the film is not worth going to see purely to understand this reference.)
Emmerich barely spares a thought for the middle class London dwellers that have seen their plans of hiring out their maisonettes for the month of the Olympics and having a gangbang to celebrate. Indeed, London’s bid for the Olympics turned out to be a bit of a waste of time and money. Emmerich seemed to think London in general was a waste of time and money, using what looked pretty much exactly like stock footage of the 90’s poll tax riots for the chaos that was meant to be occurring over here.
It is actually remarkable how much hatred it is possible to feel for these characters when they are such hollow shells. Dialogue along the lines of ‘What’s the point in saving humanity if the first thing we do is inhumane?’ go a long way to explain it though. The fact that, oh yeah – spoiler alert, as if you wouldn’t have fucking guessed it – Cusack essentially dispatches his rival and then gets back with his wife is so trite I threw up an interesting mix of Fanta and Malteser mush in my mouth. It was the first time in over two hours I had felt an emotion other than despair.
If you like watching planes taking off inches in front of explosions then this is the film for you, it happens every twelve minutes or so.
158 minutes without a moment’s tension. It’s true, WE WERE WARNED, why on Earth didn't I listen?
2012
2/10: A fucking awful film.
Luckily, this sequence of events only happens every so often. The Mayans knew about it though apparently, which makes you wonder why they didn’t put more effort into warning anyone. Wankers. Worse, show offs and wankers. (In fact, in real life, they apparently just calculated it as the end of a calendar cycle or era. Boring wankers.)
Unexpectedly for an Emmerich film, it isn’t an American that ascertains the fate of the world and has to persuade the powers-what-be that the end is nigh, but an Indian geologist. Only for a bit though. It soon is down to American geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to mention this to anyone of real importance i.e. THE PRESIDENT OF THE US OF STATES, as the Indian chap is far too bashful, and he is soon crashing governmental parties to give a report to Heavy-Handed Selfish-Man played by Carl Anheuser.
Within seconds the Most Important Man on Earth™, President Danny Glover is informed and the humanity saving ball gets rolling. Whilst the American government (and a selection of some of the more marketable administrations) keeps the ticking clock of kismet a clandestine timepiece to the common people; they use the money of the world’s richest to fund the secret construction of seven ‘arks’ in, bizarrely, the Himalayas to save the crème of humanity. Or rather the small portion of humanity that has €1,000,000,000 to spare per ticket, ‘People like Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and some rich Arabs.’
Flash-forward three years and Adrian is now trying to neck with the President’s daughter (played by Thandie Newton, in her sleep) and everybody else is ticking over without the knowledge that every single recognisable landmark in the world is about to explode in a ball of fuck.
Whilst all this is going on behind the scenes, John Cusack is mumbling along as the backwardly named Jackson Curtis, a divorced novelist-cum-limo driver who gets caught up in the shit-storm when he takes his overly-generic children to Yellowstone National Park for a camping trip. When the world begins to fall apart in front of his very eyes he quickly realises this could be a rather original way of winning his estranged wife back, cue the first of a series of impossible journeys.
What is it John? A flaccid storyline?
A swift aside; why is it necessary for action movies – and above all ‘end-of-the-world’ action movies - to have that particular brand of child actor that makes you want to cleave your eyes and ears from your writhing body and devour them rather than have to sit through another nanosecond of their soul crushingly dire acting? There should be a rule that if a child of divorced parents refers to his father by his first name, in this instance the retch-worthy Jackson, then the film should come with a ‘Consistent and Severe Lust’ warning.
Anyway, it’s in Yellowstone that Jackson meets Charlie Frost, Woody Harrelson in a mildly enjoyable turn as radio-presenting hippie-nutter who always knew it was going to happen (rather like the crazy crop duster from Independence Day and Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow). It’s a shame to see him obliterated by an airborne chunk of flaming National Park as he is the only vaguely likeable character in the bum-battering near-three hours of film.
After the initial assault on your senses, which even by my CGI hating standards was impressive, you are left to drift into a narcoleptic state of uneasiness. This isn’t because there is any type of nervousness on the audience’s part, it’s because in the lulls between mega-blasts you have to listen to the film’s dialogue, which clunks along like Ringo Starr reading Thomas the Tank Engine on smack.
It begs the question, how can such ridiculously stereotyped characters still exist in these movies? They’re not even amusing. Having already off’d a Predator and been consistently ‘too old for this shit’, Glover plays the President Thomas Wilson. A man both self absorbed and utterly devoid of merit that he decides to wander the streets of America with other fodder and make his daughter an orphan rather than be useful on the ark.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the small, polite mannered Indian scientist who accepts his fate with a sense of wobbly-headed inevitability and the Chinese workers that only really want to make their grandparents proud. ‘Some rich Arabs’, which the camera unabashedly points at when Newton’s character suggests that it was capital rather than genes that earns you a place on the ark. (To which I thought, alright love, you’re the President’s daughter, not the next cure for cancer).
Cusack’s character isn’t actually that typical of the ex-family man, pining for his wife and children while struggling to show he can be of some use; he’s just the worst parent ever. He consistently places his children in the most possible danger that they could be in, which, taking into consideration it is the End of Days, is a considerable amount.
The Russian characters are beyond satire. The big fat businessman, his two fat twins – even more selfish and disgusting than their father and finally the blonde airhead the same age as the kids, all with accents so appalling it’s embarrassing – until, that is, you hear the voice of their outrageously good looking pilot. I honestly do not think there has been a worse accent in the history of cinema.
The cast, on paper, shouldn’t be that bad. But all in all, the best bit of acting in the entire picture is by a chicken. Flawless comedy timing. (Please note, the film is not worth going to see purely to understand this reference.)
Emmerich barely spares a thought for the middle class London dwellers that have seen their plans of hiring out their maisonettes for the month of the Olympics and having a gangbang to celebrate. Indeed, London’s bid for the Olympics turned out to be a bit of a waste of time and money. Emmerich seemed to think London in general was a waste of time and money, using what looked pretty much exactly like stock footage of the 90’s poll tax riots for the chaos that was meant to be occurring over here.
It is actually remarkable how much hatred it is possible to feel for these characters when they are such hollow shells. Dialogue along the lines of ‘What’s the point in saving humanity if the first thing we do is inhumane?’ go a long way to explain it though. The fact that, oh yeah – spoiler alert, as if you wouldn’t have fucking guessed it – Cusack essentially dispatches his rival and then gets back with his wife is so trite I threw up an interesting mix of Fanta and Malteser mush in my mouth. It was the first time in over two hours I had felt an emotion other than despair.
If you like watching planes taking off inches in front of explosions then this is the film for you, it happens every twelve minutes or so.
158 minutes without a moment’s tension. It’s true, WE WERE WARNED, why on Earth didn't I listen?
2012
2/10: A fucking awful film.
This review is 700 times more entertaining than the film.
ReplyDeleteI am now adopting blowing up in "a ball of fuck" as a standard phrase.
I didn't understand the bit with the chicken, because I was watching a pirate copy where the appropriate subtitles were buried beneath the silhouetted heads of the putzes in front.
To be honest, the backs of their heads were more diverting than the film in front of them.
However, harnessing the power of my cliche detecer I guessed that the buddhist monk dude was brothers with the army dude, and it was a terribly moving sub-plot about estranged siblings who despite their differing outlooks on life were drawn together at The End of All Things.
By who gives a cunt? I paid to see things exploding and that's what I saw. Unfortunately not enough of those things were the principal cast.
Also, I spent a good majority of the film being distracted by the main characters name being "Jackson Curtis", which sounds backwards...and when rearranged the right way round is "Curtis Jackson", which is the real name of Fifty "Fiddy" "Curtis Jackson" Cent.
ReplyDeleteWas trying to see some reasoning behind this choice and finally came to the conclusion that it is because John Cusack is a low-ridin high-ballin pipe-hittin Ghetto Nigga.