2012

This is a really, really long movie. I'm pretty sure it's at least twice as long as it needed to be. What it boils down to is an elaborate version of that old game of ethics, Lifeboat, and that shouldn't take dang near three hours to play.

I need to start with the "escape from Pasadena in a limo" scene, which was so far-fetched that, rather than biting my nails through it, I was laughing. It wasn't so much disbelief at the destruction, but disbelief at the continual narrow escapes through constant peril. Evidently this was the only family to make it out of California alive. It was especially fun to see the limo catching some air. But it was kind of annoying to see these people survive so many desperately dangerous situations time and again. It's not like they were smarter, stronger, or faster than everyone else; they were just very, very lucky. And of course their luck didn't end after they made it out of California--the ultimate example being the emergence of Jackson with a gasping breath from what everyone assumed was his watery grave. Yeah, that's one of those spoilers I warned you about. But right before that moment I literally thought, Oh, come on, they've spent the entire movie priming us for the idea that Jackson will never die. He can't have come this far only to die now. (So he obliged me and reappeared).

I was really disappointed that they didn't play R.E.M.'s song "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" at all during this movie, not even during the credits. Of course the credits would have been the wrong place for it, as the movie ended on a note of hope and triumph, not doom and despair. (Yup, kind of another spoiler). But would it have killed them to put the song on the radio when Jackson was driving his kids to Yellowstone? Maybe they did and I just missed it.