2012: B

John Cusack tries to outrun the apocolypse in 2012. Director Roland Emmerich is essentially our generation's Irwin Allen, and 2012 is pretty much his "Towering Inferno."
He uses just about every trick at his disposal to turn the great landmarks of the world into delightfully cheesy looking rubble.
If ever a movie was begging to be turned into a thrill ride at a theme park, this is it. Virtually no landmark goes unscathed- except of course Chicago- as the mayan prophesy about the end of the world comes true before our very eyes.
This time its solar eruptions getting all the blame for unleashing earthquakes, meteor showers, volcanos, and tidal waves on all of earth's continents.
You definitely have to be in the right kind of mood for a picture like this.
It's story is as cheesy as they come, and no disaster movie cliche is left to languish by the wayside. Millions die, but of course the dog dodges the bullet.
And I guess I was in the right kind of mood because I kind of liked it in a dopey way. It helps to have John Cusack in the role of the sympathetic everyman- a divorced dad and struggling writer just out to get his family out of harms way. He's eminently watchable and makes you forget about the ridiculous patter the script calls for.
If you're willing to check your brain at the door and take it on its own dumb terms, you're in for quite a ride.

2012: B