There have been a growing number of disaster movies that strangely don’t focus on the disaster so much as they do with a particular man’s family.  2012 is very easily categorized into the realm of movies like The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and War of the Worlds (2005).  It’s unintentionally silly, intentionally sentimental, and neglects to supply a believable scientific basis for their situation.

I find it laughable that during the onset of the most calamitous event human history (in the respective films) these movies choose to follow a particular family’s attempt to survive.  It’s not necessarily bad, but it is funny.  It begs the question: why follow these people and not the world governments’ attempts to save human kind.  To 2012’s credit, it does use an ensemble cast to try to cover the whole of the disaster, but it all holds together in a very contrived way.  Characters conveniently find themselves in proximity to other integral characters.  It’s hard to believe that so many unrelated people would be so intricately involved in each others’ stories.  I think a film should have some degree of cohesiveness, but it should also be believable.  Sometimes it’s a simple choice of priority.  Who has the most important story?  Most characters end up having some importance to the over all plot, but it’s still contrived.

It has an all star cast.  As they should, every actor displays the talent that they are known for having.

The film takes the roller coaster effect too literally.  Too many scenes put the characters at the brink of death.  It’s like the apocalypse is chasing them, but lets them go at the last second.  The tension becomes boring.  2012 illustrates the difference between dramatic build and tension.  The ending is anti-climactic because it’s equally climactic as the rest of the film.  The scientists have to admit they were wrong several times throughout the film, because the apocalypse and individual apocalyptic events happen sooner than they predicted.  Repetition makes events lose their impact.

The villain of the film is Oliver Platt’s character Carl Anheuser.  This may be a stretch, but I assume that the German sounding name is intended to draw a parallel between Carl Anheuser and Nazi Germany.  The strange thing about this character is he’s obviously played as a cold-hearted, money-grubbing, self-centered villain, but he adequately defends himself against these aspects.  To help humanity survive the apocalypse several characters including the heads of many governments create vessels intended to withstand the events.  Among Carl’s more dubious acts are: promoting himself to head of command when the American President decides to stay behind, selling seats to the safety vessels for one billion euros a piece, and sealing the doors to the last partially unboarded vessel when the events of the apocalypse reach the vessels’ location sooner than they thought.  Carl took command because they were left without a leader, he sold the seats in order to fund the project, and he sealed the final vessel in order to assure the safety of the passengers that were already onboard.  Carl Anheuser is written to be the most rounded character in the film.  If Platt was allowed to play Anheuser the way the character should have been played, it would not have been so silly.

The theme of the movie is explicitly stated in a speech given by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character Adrian Helmsley.  He states, “The moment that man stops fighting for his fellow man is the moment that he loses his humanity.”  The movie tries to show the strength of the human spirit in the face of great adversity.  This produces flat characters, and an overestimation of man’s capacity for nobility.  The irony is that plenty of characters are intended to be seen as selfish.  The only reason the theme actually comes through is in the many glaring moments of the noble flat characters. 

A minor theme is approached.  The movie tries to promote humanity’s natural compassion above religion.  In reference to a world leader who chose to stay behind with his country, Carl Anheuser says, “He chose to trust in prayer.” Immediately after this, several places of worship are destroyed including the Sistine Chapel.  The camera follows a crack along the ceiling where it conveniently splits the famous painting The Creation of Adam between Adam and God’s fingers.  Earlier in the film, the American President reveals the bad news about the apocalypse to the nation.  When the president start quoting biblical scripture the camera feed is cut.  I have to assume that these images, among others, are intended to convey the idea that God has abandoned man or that religion is largely false.  The irony is that the inclusion of such convenient events almost proves that an ethereal being is controlling the destruction.  That ethereal being is the writer and director.  And it’s obvious. Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe the creative team were motivated solely by showing something cool, and accidentally put in an antireligious agenda.

The bull science is based on the idea that neutrinos from the sun boil the center of the Earth, without burning the surface, until the tectonic plates shift around the Earth.  In the end we discover that Africa wasn’t flooded, and can support life, so the vessels settle there.  The irony is that since Africa is largely unaffected, other than being moved further north, people will still be alive there.  The people on the vessels will therefore become refugees or invaders.  But they act like Africa is now uninhabited.

The Verdict:  I’ll give 2012 a 1.5 out of 5.  A little suspense can go a long way, and this is overkill.  It has astounding flaws in logic.  It ultimately promotes the use of flat characters.  I can’t tell if this is ironic or pretentious.

-Vince

There have been certain trends in comedy that are, at best, infuriating.  One of my complaints is that we see too much ironically unepic comedy.  What I mean is that comedies like Hot Rod will act like the events in the movie are more epic than what they really are in order to develop comedic effect.  I long for the eighties when camp was allowed to reign free, and movies like Big Trouble in Little China and Tango and Cash were allowed to exist.  They were epic to the point that they were ridiculous, and I miss that magical time.  I’ve only seen two movies in recent years that were able to recapture the eighties camp that I’ve long desired.  Balls of Fury was approaching it, but Zombieland is in good company with its ridiculously epic brethren.

Initially, I was put off by the easy character choices of the college nerd, the tough guy, the bad girl and her little sister.   I’ve grown a little weary of college kids and ineffectual males being main characters.  But Zombieland manages to pull it off.  I soon stopped caring whether or not they were archetypes because, despite that fact, every character was given dimension.

The main character, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), is a weak, scrawny, college kid who has spent much of his life as a shut-in only to be forced into the world by the zombie apocalypse.  They cap and recap his nerd status, but it never becomes tiring.  The comedy that surrounds it doesn’t get old, and the fact that the movie takes the time to cement Columbus’s nature in the audience’s minds allows for the character progression to be more apparent.

Woody Harrelson is a fantastic choice for any character that needs to be a royal bad*$$.  Personally I think a man of the southern persuasion is a perfectly viable choice for the muscle in the movie.  He doesn’t have to be dumb.  He doesn’t have to be one dimensional.  He doesn’t have to be a stereotype.  Harrelson’s character Tallahassee becomes as round as any character needs to be in order for an audience to connect with him.  On a side note, I get the feeling that Tallahassee’s costume was intentionally made to look like Marvel Comics’ Logan a.k.a. Wolverine.

Being sisters, the characters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) share the same back story.  I love it when movies will tie two significant characters’ pasts together in order to promote economical story telling.  It makes the movie faster paced while allowing for the audience to connect to the characters. 

By the advertising campaign, I was under the impression that the entire movie would take place in an amusement park.  That was by far not the case.  The amusement park was treated like the wizard’s castle in the Land of Oz, which I appreciated.  An amusement park is a very impractical place to take shelter.  Doing so basically paints a sign on your forehead that says, “All-You-Can-Eat.  First Come, First Serve.”  The filmmakers were smart enough to understand that issue, and even lead up too it with Tallahassee’s abilities to provoke zombies.

The retrospective voiceover allowed for many of the absolutely necessary running gags, and therefore earns its place in the script.  The problem is in the actor’s voice.  At first it was a little obnoxious.  I think there is an overall anxiousness to get past opening monologues voiceovers in order to get to the movie.  Despite the difference in content, the delivery of the opening voice over in Zombieland is very similar to Patton Oswalt’s delivery in Pixar’s Rattatouille.  It’s an easy way to start.  The character is a little nervous yet jaded.  He seems impatient to get to the body of his story.  It’s something I’ve heard a million times, and is always grating at the opening of a movie.  But as I said, the movie hits its stride and doesn’t look back.

Sadly, the movie blatantly points out the main themes.  Personally, I don’t think a movie should ever put its theme into a character’s dialogue unless it’s well hidden.  It wouldn’t be so bad if the themes weren’t obvious.

Another problem I had was the infinite amount of available ammunition.  They never ran out.  It wasn’t an issue that they had to worry about.  They only found one bag of guns and never stopped to loot anything other than grocery stores.  Because of the infinite amount of ammo, firearms made the zombie killing technique seem arbitrary.  Pumping enough bullets into a zombie would either kill it or not based on the writer’s sense of suspense.  Which is strange, considering the movie promotes cranial attacks in its melee fight scenes.

On a similar note, the characters regularly leave behind perfectly useful weapons.  One scene, regardless off how impressive it was, showed Tallahassee discarding each melee weapon he’s carrying after killing one zombie with it.  Then afterwards he doesn’t pick them up.  It’s impractical.  There are other entirely necessary chances to loot ammo and weapons, but I would have to spoil plot in order to make my case.  So I’ll leave it at that.

The Verdict:  The only reason I was long winded about the flaws in the movie was because I thought I could cover all of them in one blog.  It’s really worth seeing.  Even if you’re not part of the jaded horror crowd that laughs at disturbing things because it’s disturbing, it’s worth seeing because the comedy doesn’t rely on the abject to yield its effect.  There’s even a line the movie that points out the demented nature of dark humor.  I’ll give Zombieland a 4 out of 5.  It may not be art, but it’s more than good times.

-Vince