Saturday, March 13, 2010

Save Yourselves

Remember when I reviewed "Casino Royale" and I thought it was pretty much the worst movie ever? Well guess what! I found a worse one!

2012.



Even the name is making me feel queasy. Two years from now, when I spend 365 days feeling unaccountably nauseated and having nightmares, it'll be because of my unconscious, associative memory of this movie.

It's like someone in an editing booth cut the climactic 25 minutes from each of the following disaster movies and taped them together to form a three-hour gauntlet of painful, funny-in-a-bad-way action footage:

- Crimson Tide/Red October/every-submarine-movie-ever-produced ("Someone has got to swim down to where something is jamming the hydraulics! There's not enough oxygen for him to get back! It's a suicide mission!")
- Independence Day ("The White House looks like a little toy with that gigantic ship overtop of it! Oh God, no! There goes the last bastion of freedom and intelligence in the known world!")
- Titanic ("The night is so black, and the sea is so deep! One brave man has the courage to stand facing the o'ermastering ocean, seconds before he perishes as the enormous liner sinks with frightening suddeness beneath the darkness of the waves!")
- Armageddon ("We are on a tiny little planet floating in the vastness of space, at the mercy of ominous planetary alignments and unexpectedly large asteroids! Er, I mean, solar flares! Now don't you feel vulnerable? Good!")
- The Day After Tomorrow ("See how it looks when Mother Nature decides to drown all the humans in snow? or rain? And doesn't the USA look scary with all its prominent buildings and monuments gunnel-deep in precipitation!" Also in this category, "Two-second glimpses of major world landmarks and cultural icons toppling/being engulfed in flames/sinking beneath waves/rolling over screaming populace, or silly Catholics who are sitting there praying as the dome of St Peter's Basilica does a slow pastry-pin manoeuvre through the Piazza San Pietro."
- Volcano ("All that plate-tectonic stuff the geologists have been saying about the San Andreas fault finally turns out to be true! And look at the size of that gee-dee crack down Santa Monica Boulevard!")

But luckily (pick any of the above movies for an example), the YEW-nited States of aMERica has HEEroes! Remember that terrible line from Independence Day (I think), where a Royal Air Force fighter pilot turns to his copilot and says in a posh, relieved accent, "Thank God the Americans are doing SOMETHING, wot?" Record numbers of people died from acute embarrassment in cinemas all over the world.

Spare yourself the agony of wasting three hours of your life which you'll never, ever get back. I hardly ever wish I had never seen a movie - usually there is some redeeming quality, no matter how tiny, to make it worth the watch. I'm sorry to say that even the presence of Chiwetel Ejiofor (y'know - the black guy from Serenity and Kinky Boots?) couldn't save it for me. Also, I usually like John Cusack, but if he's going to keep selling out for huge blockbuster Bay-and-Bruckheimer-style action flicks instead of using his powers for.............

And while looking for links to flesh out that last sentence, I stumbled upon his (apparent) twitter feed, which makes me think I should dedicate the rest of this post to a plea for public funding to set up classrooms in Hollywood production lots so that actors can have access to basic literacy training.

Now I need to go wash my eyes by watching "Everybody's Fine". I'm depressed already, why not have a good wallow-and-cry?

Over and out.

11 comments:

kate said...

Just the other night we saw a preview and I said to Mr. Kate "in no way do I want to see this movie." You just confirmed that for me!

Gwen said...

Sorry; I was already sacrificed on this altar and should have warned you.

But thanks for the link to Chiwetel Ejiofor -- I've been meaning to watch "Kinky Boots" and now know that it won't be a total loss.

Yum.

Dave Hingsburger said...

I didn't go see 2012 because as I was born on Dec 21st, I didn't want to see a movie wherein the world ends on my birthday. And Kinky Boots is a FABulous film.

Shan said...

Dave, no worries - all you need is a billion euros to secure yourself a place on the ark.

Dave Hingsburger said...

Shannon, dearest girl, fat people float.

Shan said...

BRILLIANT!

lizbon said...

Oh darling, I hate to say I told you so, and since I can't, I'll say I would have told you so had I known you were considering it. I could tell from the previews it was going to be a disaster (no pun intended), and so I avoided forking over actual cash money to see it.

I assume someone kidnapped you and forced you to go there?

The one positive thing to come out of that horrorshow is the highly amusing review you gave it. Several different disaster movies smashed together indeed. Just what it looked like from a safe distance.

Annalea said...

Posts like these make me glad I stepped outside of Hollywood's mainstream ten years ago . . .

I still watch movies occasionally . . . very occasionally, lol . . . and only after several other people I trust have seen them. ;o)

(And how odd is this . . . my word verification word is "menses" . . . lol)

Unknown said...

I've been howling with laughter about 2012 since I saw the first preview. I was hoping there would be a sensitive subplot with John Cusack being lovely...but I guess I'll just have to watch Grace is Gone again. Thanks for the warning...I'll watch it anyway when I can netflix it, but am warned that I will hate it. :) I liked Casino Royale, though...just because Daniel Craig shirtless makes me forget all manner of useless things.

Gwen said...

Watched Kinky Boots and LOVED IT. I laughed, I cried. Chiwetel Ejiofor was incredible. Thanks for the tip, Dave.

Juno said...

Oh god, I did suffer shame-based near-death experiences at that line (and several other mortifyingly jingoistic pieces of bullshit) in Independence Day. I do like the bits with Jeff Goldblum though. (I have a secret crush on him, which is how I came to be watching that in the first place.)