At world's end

Roland Emmerich is known for his knack for destruction and pretty much only his knack for destruction. The visually oriented director has blown up the White House in Independence Day, sent a gargantuan monster rampaging through New York in Godzilla and destroyed a handful of major cities in The Day After Tomorrow.

But now, with 2012, Emmerich has gone way, way overboard — even more so than usual. His movies have been unaffectionately touted as "disaster porn," and his fetish  for mass carnage in 2012 won't help his cause.

The film's destruction is admittedly fun to watch in the beginning, if mostly for its "wow" factor. Los Angeles believably cracks and falls apart, buildings crash into one another, people fall into expanding pits, and it's all rather exciting. With a $200 million budget, one would hope it would be.

But Emmerich isn't content with destroying just one city — after all, the whole world's going down, so he might as well pick off its landmarks, one by one.

And when he sends St. Peter's Basilica barreling into a mass of people, or when he makes a crack appear right in the middle of The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or when he slams an aircraft carrier into the White House via a massive wave, or when he topples the statue, Christ the Redeemer, in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, the movie's mindless destruction starts to become sickening.

And after that, when the global cataclysm is toned down for a while, 2012 turns out to be fairly boring.

Because, for all of Emmerich's visual talents, he can't tell a story to save his life. John Cusack (Igor) plays everyman Jackson Curtis, an author and limo driver with an ex-wife (Amanda Peet, What Doesn't Kill You) and kids who just don't appreciate their old man — instead, they seem to go for their "new" dad (Tom McCarthy, Duplicity). Come to think of it, Cusack's character has a family dynamic eerily similar to Tom Cruise's character in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds in 2005.

To further emulate Spielberg's storytelling techniques, Emmerich decided to add a government component to 2012. It follows geologist-turned-presidential science advisor, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Endgame), while he bickers with Oliver Platt (Year One) as the president's chief of staff about an upcoming evacuation plan.

However, Emmerich doesn't seem to care very much about these characters — they're just vessels that move from one huge set piece to the next — which is interesting considering the director spends so much time globe-trotting early on to introduce even the most minor players.

But more insulting than the general weakness of the story is Emmerich's complete willingness to take an exciting premise and bog it down with completely ridiculous plot devices.

At one point, Cusack's hands emerge from a gaping hole in the ground, zombie-like, which elicited heavy, mocking laughter from the screening audience. McCarthy's character, with his minimal airplane flying experience, manages to take off successfully — twice — while the runway around him disintegrates. While driving, Cusack takes his car airborne multiple times.

And then there's the ridiculously blatant product placement. We get it, the government uses  Sony VAI0 computers, and everyone should go buy a Bentley. Subtlety is clearly not one of Emmerich's virtues.

But it gets worse. Everyone who isn't American is an absurd caricature of their respective nation. Characters spout hammy lines such as "nothing can come between us" right before the cracking earth literally separates them.

Only Woody Harrelson (Zombieland), playing a crazy man expecting the end of the world, seems to get the fact that he's in a ridiculous, completely self-serious movie. He gladly chews the scenery for his short screen time, and the movie's better for it.

But besides Emmerich's natural penchant for huge, striking visuals, 2012 is a failure. It starts off fun enough, but that fun soon becomes aggravation as the director tears down almost every major landmark (although, intriguingly, he never so much as touches anything from the Islamic world). And then it gets boring when, after two and a half hours, the audience realizes they have no investment in the characters. 2012 is just destruction for the sake of destruction — devoid of any message or organic emotion.

In all, it's an overblown, ridiculous waste of time. Watch the trailer to get a sense of the special effects, then stay at home and rent something worthwhile.

jwolper@umdbk.com

RATING: 1 star out of 5