2012

He’s been threatening do it since the daft alien invasions of Independence Day and the ludicrous environmental catastrophes of The Day After Tomorrow, but Roland Emmerich has finally pulled it off: the most expensive comedy in history. This film — in which John Cusack’s novelist, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s scientist and Danny Glover’s, erm, President must contend with a global apocalypse triggered by freak rays from the Sun — is full of laughs. Some are even deliberate: “Something’s keeping us apart” says a husband to his wife as they are divided by a yawning crevasse; among the super-rich refugees boarding an escape vessel we glimpse a certain octogenarian with a pair of corgis. More often, though, the comic moments are inadvertent. It’s hard to know which is more preposterous: the endless hair’s breadth escapes from CGI tsunamis and earthquakes or the speed with which characters recover from the deaths of loved ones. But say what you like about Emmerich, he really can blow things up. The man who once laid waste to the White House here topples a bevy of international landmarks. And yes, a film called 2012 even has a nod to the London Olympics — predictably, it’s hilarious.