Latest screening: 2012

The world is ending, which can only mean Roland Emmerich has once again been let out to play in his CG sand-box. But there's little to complain about here. This is Emmerich's third entry into a well-worn genre - the disaster movie - that had staples long before he started and few people that see this can have plausible deniability if they come out complaining it wasn't what they expected.

Arguably better - because frankly it's just more fun - than the solid The Day After Tomorrow but not as good as the ludicrous, but ludicrously entertaining Independence Day, 2012 does a Ron Seal. It does "exactly what it says on the tin".

In other words a menagerie of well-known faces (John Cusack, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Egiofor, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet, Tom McCarthy, Jimi Mistry, Woody Harrelson, etc) and many less well known who we can therefore consider cannon-fodder attempt to escape and survive the disaster movie to end all disaster movies. Yes, without help from outer-space - be it in the form of aliens of giant comets - the world is going to end. This is the day after The Day After Tomorrow!

Of course all the reliable cliches are in check. We have the self-absorbed dad (Cusack) who neglects his kids, one of whom hates him and prefers his mum's new boyfriend. Where could this storyline go? Hmmm, i wonder. We have the bratty rich kids of Russian billionaire and the trophy girlfriend - and, of course, her cure dog! We have the ridiculously honorable wise widower US President (Glover). We have the smart humanitarian scientist (Egiofor) who always knows what's best. We have the selfish, ass-hole political aide (presumably the White House chief-of-staff though if this is ever stated i missed it) (Platt). We have the conspiracist kook who, naturally, has been right all along (Harrelson, doing his best Randy Quaid).

On the plus side it does dispense with the usual disaster movie cliche of the scientist who knows what's going to happen but whom everyone dismisses until its (nearly) too late. For once the opening gambit of science-babble designed to make audiences think the writer may have done some research (ha!) and get all the necessary exposition out of the way in the first 5 minutes so that stuff can get on with blowing up, is actually listened to be political administrations. So that's something at least. And Emmerich also (perhaps unintentionally, but i'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt after destroying the world 3 times) plays some of the cliches so way over the top that it's all the more amusing. The expexted dog-in-peril moment isn't groan-worthy here because it's so audacious and comical that you have to tip your hate to a man that either really knows how to entertain or is genuinely the cornyist filmmaker ever to touch celluloid. Either way this sort of boldness should be cherished.

What we really come to see though is the world getting all kinds of crap kicked out of it and stuff blowing up. Aliens and Will Smith were all well and good but it was well marketed images of the White House and the Empire State Building being obliterated that drew huge crowds to Independence Day and Emmerich doesn't skimp on the spectacle in 2012. Super-volcanoes erupting, ash-clouds enveloping cities, massive rifts in the Earth's crust, supermarkets cleved in two, California falling into the sea, tidal-waves engulfing the Earth, an aircraft carrier flattening the White House - it's all here and it does look fantastic. I couldn't fault the effects (unlike Day After Tomorrow) it does all look great. The man knows he has to go all out here and boy does he.

Of course the characters are almost incidental but it helps to have an actor as damn likeable as the ever engaging Cusack to anchor the piece. Cusack can simply do no wrong, his laconic everyman is the more palatable version of a Will Smith. He can be heroic but you know its a begrudging heroism and that wonderfully relatable. You can put Cusack at the centre of the most preposterous story (Con Air anyone) and it becomes instantly more enjoyable.

Like The Day After Tomorrow is can tend to be a little serious and could use a bit more humour, but there are (unintentional - or not, eh, Roland) laughs to be had and while not cracking one-liners Cusack is such a laid-back kind of actor that you almost feel like he's being funny. Ironically the most sought after laughs - visual gags of California's governator at a press conference, The Queen getting to safety - are unnecessary and feel overplayed.

A slight negative is the film does seem to overdo the "plane in peril" shots, almost as if unable to do one in Day After Tomorrow and aware this may have to be his last disaster epic Emmerich decided to cram in as many as humanly possible.

Of course you could also argue a lack of characterisation beyond surfaces, the cliched roster of characters and the requisite cheese-ridden dialogue are negatives, but like i said at the outset, if you don't know what you're getting into when you buy the ticket then you probably only have yourself to blame.

This really is the disaster movie to end all disaster movies, though perhaps Emmerich has inadvertently ended his career in the process. Where does 'the disaster movie man' go from here? He'll have to destroy the solar system next.

Regardless 2012 is the kind of ridiculous entertainment that is a welcome diversion amongst the heavy roster of awards-baiting dramas currently battling for my attention and if you can't have daft fun spectaculars like this on the cinema screen then what's really the point?