2012 / By now, we’re all a bit jaded when it comes to the end of the world. Perhaps Al Gore’s inconvenient truths killed our fun, so when Roland Emmerich’s 2012 reared its destructive head in preview trailers, it was initially hard to get up for the end of days again and treat this film like the blockbuster event it is. (Emmerich, our modern day Irwin Allen, seems to be treating this as his last megaton hurrah as well. His next project is reportedly a smaller period piece about Shakespeare.)

Still, if 2012 is the last armageddon flick we see for a long while, it’s brutally efficient at what it does and almost admirable in its desire to follow its sole purpose: to bash its audience senseless with expensive special effects, rationality be damned.

Instead of a meteor, or really bad weather–as in the director’s previous apocalypse epic The Day After Tomorrow–what’s going to do us in this time is allegedly prophesized in the Mayan calendar. Reportedly, we’re all screwed in the year 2012. “Scientifically,” there appear to be solar flares heating everything up. Tectonic plates shift and massive earthquakes cause continents to fall into the ocean. At least that’s what appears to happen; even the government scientists in the movie can’t seem to quite get their logistics and data right, much less the timeline for impending doom. Their constantly errorneous projected estimates change so often on their digital monitors that it practically becomes a running joke.

John Cusack does what he can as our sci-fi writer hero, trying to save his estranged family by securing them safe passage on government-built giant seacrafts known as “arks.” The actor actually manages to emote amid the skillful CGI natural-disaster chaos. Somehow he not only makes the panic believable, but also convinces us he is the best darn driver on the West Coast. He manuevers a limo through crumbling buildings as the road caves furiously away behind him, and later barrels a Winnebago over rocky mountain terrain inches away from an exploding pyroclastic cloud from the newly erupted mega-volcano in Yellowstone National Park.

Another solid performance comes from Chiwetel Ejiofor as chief geologist for the White House. A bright spot in such films as Redbelt and Children of Men, he makes his big-budget debut here, and the actor is talented enough to make not only his noble speeches swallowable, but also manages to generate the charisma to distract us from the monster holes in the plot and logistical inconsistencies for the planetary turmoil.

If there’s a real complaint, it’s that 2012 runs about a half-hour too long. Two hours and 40 minutes is a bit much to handle, especially if the ending is anticlimactic. After seeing giant waves, whole cities sliding into the ocean and nuclear volcanic eruptions, watching Cusack try to fix an engine malfunction for the last 30 minutes is a letdown. Still, he does it with Lloyd Dobler charm. Even the end credits are over the top with a power ballad from the American Idol screamer Adam Lambert, belting notes that might shatter the windshields of cars parked in the multiplex’s garage.

For what it is, 2012 is kicky, junk-food fun, and provides exactly what it promises: finely crafted, computer-generated scenes of the ground falling out from under hapless mortals. And wait till you see what happens to poor Hawaii. The audience at the preview screening actually applauded our collective demise. Gotta love locals.

(Wussies take note: the Discovery Channel and NASA soberly posted online the various holes in 2012’s reasoning behind our planet’s demise, so don’t max out those credit cards quite yet.)

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