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70
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51
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71
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80
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76
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79
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88
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40
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74
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89
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76
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63
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32
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69
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36
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xx
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76
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52
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74
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47
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19
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54
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60
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84
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xx
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43
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64
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64
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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
2012
EMAILPRINTColumbia Pictures (Sony)

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 235 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Drama | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Roland Emmerich
Harald Kloser
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 13, 2009
DVD: March 2, 2010
Running Time: 158 minutes, Color
Origin: USA | Canada
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for intense disaster sequences and some language
Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson
Never before has a date in history been so significant to so many cultures, so many religions, scientists, and governments. 2012 is an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors. (Sony Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Metacritic's Top 10 Most Notorious Disaster Movies
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
There's something to be said for a formula picture done almost to perfection. In 2012, Emmerich gives you everything you expect, but gives it to you bigger.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Dan Kois
2012 takes the disaster movie -- once content simply to threaten the Earth with a comet, or blow up the White House -- to its natural conclusion, the literal end of the world.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family) spends half an hour on ominous set-up scenes (scientists warn, strange events occur, prophets rant and of course a family is introduced) and then unleashes two hours of cataclysmic special events hammering the Earth relentlessly.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
The visual effects are pretty sensational, delivering the cutting-edge CGI goods auds want and expect. It will be hard to watch "Earthquake'' ever again after this one.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
2012 isn't a bad movie that, out of sheer boredom, you might snicker at once or twice; it's a two-and-a-half hour laugh riot that plays on our expectations of the genre by anticipating and exceeding them.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
As you might suspect, the 2012 dialogue is pure Velveeta.
Read Full Review >New Orleans Times-Picayune Mike Scott
For all of its faults, ends up being relentlessly watchable as well, a summertime popcorn spectacle plopped down in the middle of the fall movie season.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
God forgive me, but I enjoyed the nerve-racking silliness of this newest, loudest exercise in destruction.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
For visual noise by the ton, Emmerich is my kind of hack, the pluperfect blend of leaden self-seriousness and accidental-on-purpose self-satirist.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber
Eye-popping special effects ensure that this movie will be a smash hit, and while it's entertaining for most of its excessive running time, the cheesy script fails to live up to the grandeur of the physical production.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Any sentient viewer will be able to predict every lumpy twist of this ludicrous, fitfully enjoyable movie.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams
This long, ludicrous soap opera is also a mighty spectacle, a new standard in disengaged destruction.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
This film that imagines the end of the world not as a whimper but as an implosion is a preposterously diverting, instantly forgettable, big-screen video game.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
As far as the new disaster film 2012 is concerned, the world will end with both a bang and a whimper, the bang of undeniably impressive special effects and the whimper of inept writing and characterization. You pays your money, you takes your chances.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
Although 2012 is what they call "critic-proof," it's not immune to analysis. It depicts a world where no one, man or God, has much say in what happens to the planet, and where the survival of one family outweighs the deaths of billions.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
2012 is totally, certifiably nuts, without being quite as off-the-wall kitschy as Emmerich's last special-effects extravabanzoo, "10,000 BC."
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The movie is an undeniable visual spectacle, but just as unequivocally a cheesy, ridiculous story.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Rick Kisonak
If characters with more than one dimension, a plausible story and some sort of viewpoint are moviegoing musts, you may leave 2012 feeling a tad shortchanged.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Doomsday views are a knockout, but the script is a real disaster.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Chuck Wilson
The two-hour-and-40-minute 2012 is overstuffed with special-effects, but the Curtis clan's mad dash out of town is the closest the movie gets to actually being fun.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The last 40 minutes test your patience -- and intelligence -- in a way the rest of this big, dumb, crazy movie never does:
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The result is a state-of-the-art multiplex three-ring circus whose special effects stagger the senses and play like a video game, whose human drama aims for the cosmic and lands waist-deep in the Big Silly.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
It occurred to me that Emmerich and Co. might be playing this whole thing for laughs. It probably occurred to them, too.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf
The set pieces are grand—gloriously dumb and never realistic enough to make you wince at the fact that billions of microscopic souls are dying before your eyes. Rather, you wince at everything else.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Despite the frenetic action scenes, the movie sags, done in by multiple story lines that undercut one another and by the heaviness of its conceit.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Where else are you going to get a chance to see the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy drift down the side of a mile-high tsunami and take out the White House? Big. Dumb. Fun.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Perhaps the strangest thing about 2012 is that the bad parts of the film are among the most enjoyable, because they're so over-the-top ridiculous that it's impossible not to break out laughing.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Operates in a dead zone roughly equidistant between parody and idiocy. You do get the connection between tongue and cheek, but much of the humor still goes thud.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Emmerich’s main achievement is to take a bunch of excellent actors, including Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Woody Harrelson, and to prevent all of them--with the exception of Oliver Platt and a pair of giraffes--from giving a decent performance.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching "Transformers 2" for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
As always in Emmerich's rollicking Armageddons, the cannon speaks with an expensive bang, while the fodder gets afforded nary a whimper. Of course, that's just part of disaster's simple recipe: Blow us up, then blow us off.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
2012 is ultimately only about finding new ways to topple monoliths. Only they don’t feel that new.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 235 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Shelby S gave it a0:
This movie was a hideous mess and particularly painful because of its length. What went wrong with this movie? Everything.
Elias C. gave it a0:
You can count on a Roland Emmerich disaster film to be a disaster. In the tradition of his '10,000 BC' and 'Godzilla', '2012' stands as another badly acted, incoherent, poor science, awful CGI, and overlong film. Undoubtedly it made a lot of money in its initial release because that is what Emmerich does best and will continue to do. I really tried to like this film. I did not expect 'Citizen Kane'. But this film is awful in it's impossible misuse of every science in the known universe. If you must watch this film, do it as I did: Consider it a comedy. You will laugh yourself silly. I will spoil it for you right from the start: Ask yourself how John Cusak can drive with 2 young kids in a limo from southern California to Yellowstone National Park, back to southern California, and then back again to Yellowstone National Park in 2 days. Destined to be a midnight cult classic of bad filmmaking.
Robert H gave it a1:
Before seeing this movie, I already knew what to expect, a few death defying moments, some "wow, this is impossible" survival tactics, and stuff getting messed up, when I actually saw the movie, it left me with a "been there, done that" type of feeling. The entire family aspect of the movie was garbage. Everytime they showed that family on the screen made me want to turn it off. It seemed like everything went exactly perfect for them. Every thing feel exactly into place, and they are surviving all of these outragous scenes while the other billions of people in the world are dying. Really? That's bull. The entire movie wasn't horrible, a lot of the speeches between family members (ie. Father-son, father-daughter, grandfather-granddaughter) scenes were extremely good, aside from the main family of course. It just seemed too happy ever after for me. All of the people in the movie that most people would want to kill of end up dying while the main family stays perfectly fine. A load of steaming "our family can survive anything" dog crap. Take the main family our of it and its a really great film, but seeing how it was geared towards them, really blows.
Daniel S gave it a7:
It was pretty good for a 2 hour 40 minute movie. Some parts god me frightened and on the edge of the couch like "oh no are they going to make it?" But at the first half its all about lava, fire, and earthquakes, and the other half is all about giant floods, what the ****?!?! And the Russian helicopters carrying 2 of every species in some suit tied to a rope hanging down 20 feet away from the helicopter was pretty stupid. Wouldn't they die from some blood rush or hypothermia? The effects were pretty good and realistic though, and I really liked the storyline, it was still a good movie.
landon w gave it a10:
I'm Voting a 10 because it is an awesome scenes too see on BLURAY, yes the story had parts that could have better plot but its a future movie & thats not always sci-fi accurate. But way kool on bluray all the way!
Jesse J gave it a9:
I can not believe people say this has a bad story line. It is friggin amazing, every one is hating on it because they claim it is just pure CGI and no story line, that is complete bs. This movie has an amazing story line and it is very inspiring, and at the same time it packs a massive punch with the amazing CGI scenes, John Cusak is also friggin awesome. I recommend any one to watch it, including people who hate all the "modern movies".
Dale C. gave it an8:
Ok. Can we all put a moratorium on "Well, that was 2 and a half hours [or other amount of time] that I'll never get back..." Please. It's lame. Wasn't funny 10 years ago. And really, what did you expect from a movie called "2012" with giant tidal waves and destruction on the movie poster? If you're in the mood for disaster, this is a fun movie. Forget the story, acting and especially dialogue. This isn't a Coen brothers movie. If you're more of a rom-com or groundbreaking documentary lover, then, yes, this will in fact be 2 and a half hours you'll never get back.
